JBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

' frp i a 

ilptp ©ntnjrinfrt f o 

Shelf... 

DNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




CC 

<"T <r<c 
c<c 

«T cc < 

«U CC C 

C«C <L C 

«L gct c 



K c 

C 
' C < 

C ' c 



4 C < C 

' C « 

«L re 

<*C^ <c 









6.C c< C 






cc *_ < 






^^__ 


c < < 


lassL. 


« 


CC 






4tc^ 


« ( 


«fe 


< 


c c< - 






4C^ 


' c 




« 


s CC * « 






«c 


c C ' 


«r 


JC * 


< CC a 






<3C 


' c 


<c 




cc> 






<< 


' < 


<i.. 


X" 


c cc 






<*C 


< c 


<i 




■•< « 






v:<: 


< t 


i « 




C i cc 






C 
< 


•c c 
< o 


C 


i 


< 




<c 


^ 


dT< 




C 


c c 
c c 


< 
< 


c 


< 


■ < 


« 


- 


c: 


< 


< 


c Ot 


«r~ 




■ 


^:_ 




.< 


c 


c c 


<*■■ 




1 






•iC" 


< 


■ 


<rr 



r 


OC_ 




-■:« 

m 
-~* 

c 


C_e 

c_ 

c 

■Cii 

CC 

<:< 


< 
< 

i 


- V 


c 

* : 

c 




< 4 

< < 

c < 
C 

c < 


c < 


r < 
<: 


Ci 






c 

'< '.c^_ 


c: 






CC d 

CC C 

< c C 

CC <r 

c<. c 

O < 

C C < 

C < i 




cc 


%^_ 


* r 


€^" <ic <r <• «/ 

cr c <r <: 




c 
c 


,< 


czi^ 


^_ 


< 






C21 









c< 


<j * 


CC 


<c < ' 


cc 


<5 < .< 


c 


« C c 


<c 


c:c c c 


c< 


c 




cr < 


i 


<L c c 


<- 


<c c< c 




<c < 




<3 < 




<r c <^ 




cr < < 


< 


<T * C c 




<c C 




cr c « 

CC < < 


c 


c 


<: 


c « c 


C 


c c 


<- 


<r^ <*C<' 






<c^; - < < 



C( 






<" -I c 



c 


<tf 






<T" 


cot 




c<SL 




«SC 



d 















RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED, 



AND 



FIFTY QUESTIONS ANSWERED 



THROUGH 



Five Hundred Reverent Reasoners. 



BY 



EEN'JAMIN F. BURNHAM. 



They were dulling their teeth at the shell while I was 
enjoying the kernel. — Goethe. 




BOSTON: 

The Union Company. 

1883. 






Copyright 1883, 
By Bbnj. F. Burn ham. 



INTRODUCTION. 



One can hardly have too many aids to be "ready always to give 
an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope 
that is in you with meekness and fear, having a good conscience,'* 
and at the same time heed Shakspere's hint that "your reasons" be 
"sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without 
affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, 
and strange without heresy." 

Of books whose theme is the birth, the life, the death, and the 
character of Jesus Christ, the name is legion. None of them, except 
one or two of limited scope, seem to present impartially the most 
advanced thought extant on the fifty principal topics of that theme. 
Most of the authors evince that "self-interest, the long habit of look- 
ing mainly at one side, and steady training in opposition to the other 
side, are influences for casuistry too powerful to be matched by the 
best intentions. They have each," adds Moncure D. Conway, 
"brought his little block of stone, under impression that it was the 
whole temple, to a point where comparative study may take it up 
and fit it to every other block, that the sacred edifice of humanity 
may arise." 

The success of the writer or reader who has in hand this fitting 
will depend much on how little he strains to avoid mal-adjustment of 
his spiritual stature to the proportions of any Procrustean creed- 
bed ; on how impartially he selects his appliances ; on how readily 
he draws his weapons for Truth from the whole religious armory of 
Christendom. Nay, even heathendom will be brought under tribute, 
and Seneca shall testify that " he who determines anything without 



INTRODUCTION 

hearing both parties, though he may have determined justly, has not 
himself been just." 

Indeed, the old Hebrew admonition against so answering a matter 
has cumulative corroboration in the codes of legislatures and the 
decrees of judiciaries; in the insight of the philosopher testifying, 
with John Stuart Mill, that " he who knows only his own side of the 
case knows little of that " ; and, in the reflection of the divine, 
observing with the Anglican that " no man who knows nothing else 
knows even his Bible." To form an opinion is not always to form a 
judgment. Many people treat their beliefs as Don Quixote treated 
his armor. He first tried it by a heavy blow of his sword against 
his helmet, cutting off the visor, and undoing in a moment the work 
of a week. So he mended it / and made it stronger, but concluded 
not to try it again ; to let it pass for a good, strong helmet, without 
further experiment. And thus the adage : ".That man does not 
believe his creed who is afraid of hearing it attacked." 

In studying the life of any historic personage, — that of Jesus not 
-excepted, — the proper selection, arrangement, and treatment of the 
subjects have been well suggested by a premise in President Garfield's 
Memorial Address on General George H. Thomas : " Given the char- 
acter of a man, and the conditions of life around him, what will be 
his career ? Or, given his career and surroundings, what was his 
character? Or, given his character and career, of what kind were 
his surroundings ? The relation of these three factors to each other 
is severely logical. From them is deduced all genuine history." 

The word " severely " was here well chosen. Imagination is so 
much easier than reasoning that, even when we revert to the scenes 
of Galilee and Judea, it requires effort to divest ourselves of indo- 
lent habits of assuming. Few of us can sincerely disclaim apprecia- 
tion of the surprise voiced by the society woman at the first exhi- 
bition of Holman Hunt's picture of "The Finding of Jesus in the 
Temple," when she exclaimed, " Well, I declare, if Mr. Hunt hasn't 
made Jesus look just like a little Jew boy." Few of us there be who 
do not need to substitute thinking for day-dreaming. 

And if, incidental to the study of Jesus' character and teachings, 
we desire to trace the identity of his doctrine of " the kingdom of 
heaven" with that of "religious evolution," it certainly is best to 
avail ourselves of the matured thoughts of sages thereon, which, 
crystallized in terse, aphoristic form,' have outlasted the centuries ; 



INTRODUCTION 



verdicts on which judgment has been entered up and affirmed on 
appeal to humanity at large.* 

The proportion of such aphoristic matter can hardly be too great 
in a book whose function is principally for meditative and leisurely 
reference. Or, as George William Curtis felicitously expressed it,t 
to " break the fetter, not with the might of the trip-hammer that shat- 
ters, but with the touch of the sunbeam that melts. . . . Channingonce 
declared that * God has not intrusted the reform of the world to pas- 
sion.' The calm statement is the permanent one, the argument that 
our children's children will read and feel to be invincible. It may 
not have the glow, the fervor, the palpitation of speeches, and ap- 
peals wherein the trumpet mingles above the flute ; but it will shine 
always w'th the calm light of the stars in heaven." A " sunbeam " 
reminding us of John Milton's " Truth is as impossible to be soiled 
"by any outward touch as the sunbeam." Or, as Dr. James McCosh 
puts it, " In the end, thought rules the world, though at times im- 
pulses and passions are more powerful." Or Merle d'Aubigne, 
"Ideas make their way in silence, like the waters that, filtering 
behind the rocks of the Alps, loosen them from the mountain on 
which they stand." 

And this, too, without diffuse transitional matter, if any. Robert 
Southey testifies that " it is with words as with sunbeams : the more 
they are condensed, the deeper they burn." And George Herbert, — 

A verse may find him who a sermon flies. 

* For such store of pertinent aphorisms, both in prose and poetry, the surviving 
author would here acknowledge his indebtedness to his deceased coadjutor, his wife, 
Celeste, daughter of Rev. Henry Shute, born at Columbia, N.Y., 1S30; died at 
Boston, 1S80. Her rare spiritual intuition had rendered her — what James T. 
Fields calls Leigh Hunt, in comparing him to the African bird that befriends the 
bee-hunter — "a honey-indicator" in religious literature. The longer quotations 
(wherein book and page are cited) are made with consent of the respective authors 
or publishers. In these, later authors, writing under superior advantages for review- 
ing, and comparing, are preferred to earlier; for instance, Dr. Geikie, to any one in 
the list of nearly two hundred authors consulted by him in the preparation of his 
Life and Words of Christ. So, also, as to Drs. I. Hooykaas, J. F. Clarke, James 
Strong, etc., and recent encyclopaedists. (Compare the Analytical and the Quota- 
tion Indexes.) For some unquoted matter in chapters upon the Sermon on the 
Mount, Prayer, and Immortality, acknowledgment is due to skeleton notes of ser- 
mons delivered forty years ago at North Yarmouth, Me., and Groton, Vt., by Rev. 
Benjamin Burnham, born at Rumney, N.H., 1791 ; died at Groton, Vt., 1875. 

*In his response at the Brooklyn Channing Centennial. 



INTRODUCTION 

And Alexander Pope, " Half our knowledge we must snatch, not 
take." And Francis de Voltaire, "The multiplicity of facts and 
writings has become so great that everything must be reduced to 
extracts." And William Wirt : "The age of ornament is over, that of 
utility has succeeded : the put^na quam pomp<e aptius is the order of 
the day ; and men fight now with clenched fist, not with open hand, 
— with logic, and not with rhetoric." Dr. Samuel Johnson's remark, 
"Cla the parole of literary men all over the 

world," appli er quotation and to the "community of min 

among all thinks: 

In some chapters herein, especial upon the " Sermon on 

the Mount " and the " Immortality of thfl cms best to let 

certain trite absi ttcr yield place retions, and not to 

that an age of thought has succeeded to an age of 

id prescribes to theology I iditions, unlike re- 

remarkc 
II. I i . be the centre and the 

ie sidereal universe, and sun, moon, and 
i were believed to be movable lanterns i 1 it, — 

ip, — the whole created 

a few thousand last a very 

I when men believed in dragons and griffins 

and 1 underneath the earth for the 

r the b!< 

e the tendt Modern 

philanthl I throw mere unpractid '-al matter into 

us"Itc 
Stephen G g that no ecclesiast 

I "keep their tender ree 

, until the | be planted 

therein." He believed 1 v that which bet 

us 1 lily life is the prime ung girl wa- 

the ethics of horse-car tickets, 
and, on 1 is were not taken up in 

it they were lear: 
the k It recalls a line or two in Mr. ChadwicVs Ode 

on Planning : — 

<ect» 

".iaking »;' 
The pleasant earth 



INTRODUCTION 

Our Father, God ; our brother, Man : 
On these commandments twain be hung 
The law and prophets all ; and rung 
For all the churches' eager ban, 
A hundred changes deep and strong. 

Now o' days, the common sense discountenances the logic dilemma 
of the Mohammedan that burned the Alexandrian library : namely, 
if the books accorded with the Koran, they were superfluous; if 
not, they were pernicious. Rather pleasanter to contemplate is the 
humor of the late Hebrew Lord Mayor of London, who, in making 
the customary contributions, cheerfully included the one to the 
Society for the Conversion of the Jews. No doubt, he parted with 
the jewel consistency; but, in his reciprocity, — his recognition of the 
good which Christianity does for "sheep on the other side of the 
fence," — he kept the Koh-i-noor of the crown of his heart-treasure. 
Fishers of men may properly "fling a sprat to catch a herring." 
Bishop William Warburton lost nothing by his playfully whispered 
concession to Lord Sandwich, puzzled for a definition in the debate 
on the Test Law : " Orthodoxy is my doxy ; heterodoxy is another 
man's doxy." Nor President Hayes, by saying in the face of parti- 
sans, " He serves his party best who serves his country best." It is 
becoming a popular sentiment that nothing is gained to religion by 
branding Justin Martyr " heterodox," though he declared the Logos 
was manifested before it appeared in Jesus. Not in secular politics 
alone do whole congregations "wander and apply" Goldsmith's ani- 
madversion on Burke, — 

Who born for the universe narrowed his mind, 
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. 

W. H. H. Murray's remark, " To abuse another man's piety is a 
sorry way to prove your own," was also a seed dropped in good soil : 
it outgrows hostile sowings of tares, and finds welcome garners. 
More and more is getting appreciated the generous exclamation of 
O. B. Frothingham : " How cheering the summons to render full jus- 
tice to the aspirations of mankind ; to bring harmony out of the dis- 
cordant utterances of faith ; to demonstrate the fraternity of earnest 
thinkers and deep feelers in all time ! " And clear and sunny above 
dispersing fogs of olden dark days — above both odium theologicum 



INTRODUCTION* 

and odium scepticum — stand forth wise words of Jefferson : " Eiror 

of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat 

And of Lincoln : " With charity for all, with malice toward none, 

with firmness in the right as God giv sec the righ 

Judge Thomas Russell, at the recent Plymouth celebration : " And 

we, honoring where we cannot always follow, admiring where we 

cannot all agree, reverence the belief of our fathers. And to all 

attacks and to all ridicule we reply*— and we love to repeat it,— The 

excesses of faith are better than the best thoughts of unbelief, and 

even the errors of faith may be imputed to the four. I nation 

for righteousness and power illy, the accordant harmony 

of Tennyson : — 

O thou I 

Mi-'t MM t<> h.i\r reached a ; urcr Air, 
U 

I e thou thy iboW, when the prays, 
heaven, her happy new* 
•hrouf h form is pore a* thin*, 
hand* arc logood: 

acre! be the rlcth and blood 
I h divine I 
Sot thou that coonteot reason rip* 
In holding by the law within 
Thou (ail not in a world of sin. 

« ant of »uch a type. 

Thus much as to t D and reason. Hut, at the threshold of 

our study of the subject, we are met by another preliminary inqi. 
namely, as to the rt I reason and faith. This, then, shall con- 

stitute the topic of the first chapter. 

South Bovt -♦. i88j. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. INTERPRETATION. 9-2O. 
In studying the Bible, what is the function of Faith, and what that of Reason ? 

CHAPTER II. consecution. 21-25. 

What is the chronological order of the early records of the life and teachings of Jesus? 

CHAPTER III. inspiration. 26-31. 

What two views concerning inspiration of the Bible writers ? 

CHAPTER IV. composition. 32-37. 

What two diverse opinions as to the circumstances of the writing and of the writers of 
the four canonical Gospels ? 

CHAPTER V. narration. 38, 39. 

What is the order of the principal events narrated in the four canonical Gospelc ? 

CHAPTER VI. accretion. 40-43. 

What two views as to the exemption of narrations concerning Jesus from the ordinary 
liability to accretion ; (and herein) what may safely be considered the uses of 
the Oriental imageries? 

CHAPTER VII. generations. 44, 45. 

What two different views of the genealogical records of Jesus ? 

CHAPTER VIII. ANNUNCIATION. 46-48. 

What two views concerning the annunciation to Mary, the star-heralding, and the 

angel-chorus ? 



NTS 

CHAPTER IX. location. 49, 50. 

What d; . -he birth of Je- 

CHAPTER X. 

What three views concerning the ; 

CHAPTER XI ation. 5S-64. 

What thi xpreaskm of Jesus, 

•« Our Father 

CHA1 65-67. 

CH 



secret order whose - 

the possible relation of Jesus there: 

(II ' XIV. 

baptism of Jesus? 



empution of Jesus, and 

1 the effect of s ucc es s and of 

(HAITI R XVI. 83-Sd 

I and to r ■ 1 icsson " 

were placed in the t manors of Jesi. 

CHAPTER XVII. b 

m and S | esu*, enV 

the lower human tendencies with the higher and 



THAI VIII. ^)5- 

What ■ >ncerning the existence of a personal der 

the teachings of Jesus ii 



CONTEXTS 

CHAPTER XIX. TRANSGRESSION. 96-101. 

What are the different Orthodox and other leading metaphysical views concerning the 
'* mystery of the Fall M and Christ's teachings thereon ? 

CHAPTER XX. inception. 102, 103. 

Why did Jesus choose Capernaum for the beginning of his public ministry, and how- 
did the associations of the place affect his discourses 



CHAPTER XXI. inauguration. 104, 105. 

In opening the gospel work, what were the personal habits of Jesus; and what the 
order of incidents, including the choice of disciples ? 



CHAPTER XXII. expansion. 106-109. 

What two views concerning the development of Christ's character and mission? 

CHAPTER XXIII. ADAPTATION. IIO-II2. 
What other explanation of the fact of Christ's use of approximative language? 

CHAPTER XXIV. allocution. 113-117. 

Where, when, and how were the principal discourses of Jesus delivered? 

CHAPTER XXV. veneration. 11S-124. 

Wherein and what the regenerating tendencies of the indoctrination of faith in Christ 
and in the mutuality or "solidarity" of the human race? 

CHAPTER XXVI. evolution. 125-129. 

What is meant in the Beatitudes by the u kingdom of heaven," and what the prog- 
ress of its development ? 

CHAPTER XXVII. indoctrination. 130-137. 

What is the most important characteristic of the Sermon on the Mount, and what the 
first four precepts against selfishness ? 

CHAPTER XXVIII. realization. 138-147. 

What three leading experiential precepts in the Sermon on the Mount ? 



CONTENTS 
CHAPTER XXIX. supplication. 148-155. 

What three views of Christ's precepts on prayer ? 

CHAPTER XXX. aspiration. 156-165. 

What generally indorsed sentiments of experienced thinkers upon best promoting the 
aspirational element of prayer ? 

CHAPTER XXXI. alleviation. 166-171. 

What two views of the curative ministrations of Jesus to minds and bodies diseased ? 

CHAPTER XXXII. transfiguration. 172-174. 

What three views concerning the Transfiguration ? 

CHAPTER XXXIII. aggression. 175-178. 

What three views concerning Christ's ejecting traders from the temple; and what 
generally as to his self-assertion or aggression ? 

CHAPTER XXXIV. ministration. 179-188. 

What is the common enumeration of the miracles alleged in the four Gospels to have 
been performed by Christ ; and what the present different leading views of the 
accounts thereof ? 

CHAPTER XXXV. verification. 189-192. 

What is the present tendency of the age in applying the rule of Paul, ' ' Make the 
doctrine prove the miracle,'' and the converse rule of Trench and Mill that 
11 No miracle proves a doctrine " ': 

CHAPTER XXXVI. resurrection. 193-200. 

What two views concerning a resurrection of the body of Jesus ? 

CHAPTER XXXVII. election. 201-203. 

What two views as to "divine election and foreordmarion," and the teach. 
Christ and Paul thereon ? 

CHAPTER XXXVI [I. redemption. 204-206. 

What two views of redemption of the soul from consequences of sin 5 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XXXIX. transition. 207-211. 

What transitional condition is implied in the "Free-will" explanation of Paul's 
words " all be made alive," etc. ? 

CHAPTER XL. regeneration. 212-217. 

What is the evolutional view of regeneration, and what concerning emotion, subordi- 
nation, and profession, as factors or as results ? 

CHAPTER XLI. salvation. 218-221. 

What is the evolutional view concerning the later as compared with the earlier 
teachings of Paul upon the scope of the life and death of Christ with reference 
to our salvation ? 

CHAPTER XLII. damnation. 222-232. 

What three views concerning Christ's intendment in the use of the words " Gehenna," 

"Condemnation," etc. ? 

CHAPTER XLIII. perpetuation. 233-247. 

What are the five principal arguments in behalf of the immortality of the soul ? 

CHAPTER XLIV. exaltation. 248-254. 

What two views as to Christ's intendment concerning heaven ? 

CHAPTER XLV. intellection, emotion, volition. 255-263. 

Supplementary to the teachings of Socrates, Plato, Christ, and Paul, what are the 
four principal philosophical theories of the mind's knowledge of God? 



APPENDIX. 265. 
xi 



Two angels guide 
The patli of man, both aged and yet young, 
As angels are, ripening through endless years. 
On one he leans : some call her Memory, 
And some Tradition; and her voice is sweet 
With deep mysterious accords. The other, 
Floating above, holds down a lamp, which streams 
A light divine and searching on the earth, 
Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, 
Yet clings with loving cheek, and shines anew, 
Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp 
Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked 
But for Tradition. We walk evermore 
To higher paths by brightening Reason's lamp. 

George Eliot. 



Chapter I. 



INTERPRETATION. 



In studying the Bible, what is the Function of Faith, and what 

that of Reason ? 

The Bible is a book of books. Some were written many 
centuries before the others. The writers wrote under different 
circumstances. Some of the records are more fragmentary 
than others. Some are more poetical or legendary than others. 
To view the collection as a unit, a theocratic ukase, a fetich or 
idol, is to look with the eyes half shut. Even assuming that 
there are three aspects of human existence, — the life practical, 
the life intellectual, and the life religious or mystical, — and 
that each has its own requirements in point of understanding, 
still our obligation to revere must be at one with our necessity 
to analyze. With mysteries, with whatever surpasses reason, 
ratiocination meddles in vain. But as to absurdities, as to 
whatever contradicts reason, it is our duty to guard and exer- 
cise the function of a faculty quite as heaven-bequeathed as 
imagination, emotion, or intuition. Hereon concur certain 
pretty generally accepted aphorisms of some fifty most eminent 
thinkers. Incidentally, in many of them, "wisdom" will be 
found to be distinguished from "knowledge." 

First of all, Jesus and Paul: — 

And where, then, is the final judge of truth 

But in the reason of the heart of man ? 

" Why, of yourselves, judge ye not what is right ? " 

Said Jesus; and Paul after him, " I speak 

As unto wise men, judge ye what I say. . . . 

Prove all things, and hold fast to what is good ! " 

Shakspere next: — 

Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before 
and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to rust in 
us unused. 



10 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Reason is the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning 
anything, even Revelation itself. Its duty in relation to the Script- 
ures is to judge not whether they contain things different from what 
we should have expected from a wise, just, and good Being, but 
whether they contain things plainly contradictory to wisdom, justice, 
and goodness, as elsewhere taught us of God. — Bishop Joseph Butler. 

If reason justly contradicts an article, it is not of the household of 
faith. — Jeremy Taylor. 

He that takes away reason to make way for Revelation puts out 
the light of both, and does much the same as if he would persuade 
a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote light of 
an invisible star by telescope. . . . Every sect, as far as reason will 
help them, gladly use it: when it fails them, they cry out, It is a 
matter of faith and above reason. — John Locke. 

It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom 
consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without 
the former quality, knowledge of the past is uninstructive ; without 
the latter, it is deceptive. — Archbishop Richard Whately. 

Faith affirms many things respecting which the senses are silent, 
but nothing that they deny. — Charles Pascal. 

In religion, which is the science of life in its relations Godward, 
we want facts first, and imagination, with all its treasures of worship, 
idealism, sentiment, and mysticism, afterwards. — Vicar Thomas W. 
Fowle {Reconciliation of Religion and Science, p. 153). 

Faith evermore looks upward, and descries objects that are remote; 
but reason can discover things only near, — sees nothing that's above. 
— Francis Quarles. 

Reason cannot show itself more reasonable than to cease reason- 
ing on things that are above reason. — Sir Philip Sidney. 

The only right contrast to set up between faith and reason is not 
that faith grasps what is too hard for reason, but that reason does 
not, like faith, attend to what is at once so great and so simple. The 
difficulty about faith is to attend to what is very simple and very 
important, but liable to be pushed by more showy or tempting mat- 
ters out of sight. The marvel about faith is that what is so simple 
should be so all-suificing, so necessary, and so often neglected. And 
faith is neither the submission of the reason, nor is it the acceptance 
simply absolutely upon testimony of what reason cannot reach. . . . 
Faith' is the being able to cleave to a power of goodness appealing 
to our higher and real self, not to our lower or apparent self. — 
Dr. Matthew Arnold. 



INTERPRETATION I Z 

Reason is but analyzed faith. — Schumann. 

When my reason is afloat, my faith cannot long remain in suspense^, 
and I believe in God as firmly as in any other truth whatever; in 
short, a thousand motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add 
the weight of hope to the equilibrium of reason. — Jean J. Rousseau. 

Accurate and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy fitted for 
all persons and all dispositions, and is alone able to subvert that 
abstruse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which being mixed up 
with popular superstition renders it in a manner impenetrable to 
careless reasoners and gives it the air of science and wisdom. — 
David Hume. 

In religious concerns, reason without faith tends to casuistry. Not 
in jurisprudence alone applies the ancient maxim: [Apices juris now 
suntjurd\ Subtleties of law are not law.* — Judge John McLean. 

Extremely reverential and extremely analytical tendencies of mind 
both have their dangers. — Z. Maria Child. 

Conscience is not law ; no, God and reason made the law, and have- 
placed conscience within you to determine. — Laurence Sterne. 

Christian faith is a grand cathedral with divinely pictured windows. 
Standing without, you see no glory nor can possibly imagine any ; 
standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable 
splendors- — Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

The common lights of reason and conscience and love are of more 
worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to- 
a few. — Dr. William E. Channing. 

Love reasons without reason. — Shaks^ere. 

The heart has reasons that reason does not understand. — Bishop- 
Jacques B. Bossuet. 

A loving heart is the truest wisdom. — Charles Dickens. 

The heart o'erwhelms, with whisper clear, 

The cavii, " Who awoke to see ? " 
And balms, for Sorrow's yearning ear, 

The wail of lone Gethsemane. 

George Whitfield Bur nham (New England Puritan, 1845).- 

*See post, chap, xxxiv., Tyndall's reply to Mozley, as to two distinct courts of 
appeal, etc. 



12 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Reason is, so to speak, the police of the kingdom of art, seeking 
only to preserve order. In life itself, a cold arithmetician who adds 
up our follies. Sometimes, alas ! only the accountant in bankruptcy 
of a broken heart. — Heinrich Heine. 

Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable being. — Sir William 
Hamilton. 

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of anything he was 
never reasoned into. . . . Reason is a very light rider and easily shook 
off. — Dean Jonathan Swift. 

Virtue is an angel ; but she is a blind one, and must ask of Knowl- 
edge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal. Mere 
knowledge, on the other hand, like a Swiss mercenary, is ready to 
combat either in the ranks of sin or under the banners of righteous- 
ness, — ready to forge cannon-balls or to print New Testaments, to 
navigate a corsair's vessel or a missionary ship. — Horace Mann. 

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules 
Among the herdsmen of the Alps have wrought 
More for mankind at this unhappy day 
Than all the pride of intellect and thought. 

William Wordsworth. 

Revelation mav be conceived of as a divine education of the 
race. — Got t hoi J E. Lessing. 

The wildest theories of the human reason were reduced to practice 
by a community so humble that no statesman condescended to notice 
it, and a legislation without precedent was produced off-hand by the 
instincts of the people. — George Bancroft. 

Almost all the great truths relating to society were not the result of 
scholarly meditation, "hiving up wisdom with each curious year," but 
have been first heard in the solemn protests of martyred patriotism 
and the loud cries of crushed and starving labor. . . . New England 
learned more of the principles of toleration from a lyceum committee 
doubting the dicta of editors and bishops when they forbade it to put 
Theodore Parker on its platform ; more from a debate whether the 
anti-slavery cause should be so far countenanced as to invite one of 
its advocates to lecture; from Sumner and Emerson, George William 
Curtis and Edwin P. Whipple refusing to speak unless a negro could 
buy his way into their halls as freely as any other, — New England 
has learned more from these lessons than she has or could have done 
from all the treatises on free printing from Milton and Roger Will- 
iams, through Locke down to Stuart Mill. — Wendell Phillips (The 
Scholar in a Republic, p. 12). 

The tree of knowledge is not that of life. — (Geo. G. Byron ?) 



INTERPRETATION 1 3 

Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; 
wisdom, in minds attentive to their own. — William Cowper. 

To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and 
strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth. — William 
Hazlitt. 

He that will not reason is a bigot ; he that cannot reason is a fool; 
and he that dares not reason is a slave. — Sir William Drummond. 

Where men have several faiths to find the true, 

We only can the aid of reason use ; 
'Tis reason shows us which we should eschew, 

When by comparison we learn to choose. 

Sir William Davenant. 

Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers. — Alfred Tennyson. 

Reason lies between the spur and the bridle. — George Herbert. 

Truly a thinking man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness 
can have. — Thomas Carlyle. 

The mind is the atmosphere of the soul. — Francis Joubert. 

Seize wisdom ere 5 tis torment to be wise ; 
That is, seize wisdom ere she seizes thee. 

Dr. Edward Young. 

Experience, the shroud of illusions. — J. De Finod. 

No man is wiser for his learning.* — John Selden. 

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live 
bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes 
to be a faith at all, or it is nothing. — Anthony Froude. 

Intuition, instinct, experiment, syllogism, — vast quadrants of re- 
search ! Gigantic reflectors of a light not their own ! At the focal 
point of the four, religious science, strictly so called, lights its im- 
mortal torch. — Joseph Cook. 

Syllogism is of necessary use, even to the lovers of truth, to show 
them the fallacies that are often concealed in florid, witty, or involved 
discourses. — John Locke. 

Reason the root, fair Faith is but the flower; 
The fading flower may die, but Reason lives, 
Immortal like our Father in the skies. 

Dr. Edward Yotcng. 

*An echo of the Saxon proverb: " No fool is a perfect fool until he has learned 
Latin." Selden was the profoundest scholar of his day; died 1654. 



14 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

He that is of reason's skill bereft, 
And wants the staff of wisdom him to stay, 

Is like a ship in midst of tempest left, 
Without an helm or pilot her to sway : 

Full sad and dreadful is that ship's event, 

So is the man that wants intendiment. 

Edmund Spenser. 

Reason, my guide, . . . should be my counsellor, 
But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs 
Impulses from a deeper source than hers, 
And there are motions in the mind of man 
That she must look upon with awe. 



The steps of Faith 
Fall on the seeming void, and find 
The rock beneath. 

More light ! — Goethe. (His last words.) 



William C. Bryant. 



John G. Whittier. 



In general, his faithfulness is a safe confession of faith. A frame- 
work of thought, or doctrine, forms itself in his mind, like the bones 
in his body. With fair feeding and exercise, life builds its own 
bones. But men never seek the companionship of a naked skele- 
ton. Dry bones tell of a church-yard rather than of a church. The 
public nostril is quick to detect the odor of death in those theolog- 
ical circles where 

11 Our meddling intellect 
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things 
We murder to dissect." 

. . . Alas for him who thinks it necessary to settle the authorship of 
the Fourth Gospel, or the primacy of Peter, or the possibility of 
miracles, or the genesis of life, before he can begin to live like a 
glad-hearted child of God ! — Charles G. Ames {Saratoga Sermon, 1882). 

There are no negations so sweeping and dangerous as the affirma- 
tions of superstition. The most powerful plea against all faith is 
made by a church which imposes an elaborate system of oracular 
dogmas, which ring hollow to the knock of rational inquiry. Cath- 
olic Europe to-day is illustrating the value of such positive doctrines. 
The only true positiveness in doctrine is reasonableness. Carry down 
the roots of faith below all secondary soils, external authorities of 
councils or of books, into "the constitution and nature of things," 
and you have struck hold in a soil sure to feed the future with 
beneficent and beautiful beliefs. . . . There is a faith in Jesus as much 
harder than the lofty formulas of the Nicene Creed as a life is harder 
than a philosophy. — Dr. R. Heber Newton. 

See Dr. J. F. Clarke's Essentials and Non-essentials in Religion, passim ; also 
.Unitarian Affirmations, passim. 



INTERPRETATION I 5 

The first and the last fact of human experience is intelligence and 
will. Matter, pressed to the utmost, declares itself to be Force. 
Force, pressed to the utmost, declares itself to be Thought and Will. 
And Thought, pressed to the utmost, declare that they are the breath 
of the Spirit of God. The Alpha and the Omega of human experi- 
ence is Spirit. Our science, when it has held up the world to the 
most searching scrutiny, must drop it back again into the hand of 
the Almighty, from whence it came. Reason, following motion from 
star to star, and into the infinite past, cannot escape the necessity of 
looking beyond the bounds of the visible universe for the First 
Cause, which it always seeks, but never finds within the limits of the 
seen. — Dr. Newman Smyth {Old Faiths i7i New Light, p. 164). 

In the argument from prophecy, we have to do with a forest, not 
with a single bough or a basket of leaves ; with the whole trend of a 
coast, not with single headlands or inlets of the sea; with a zone of 
constellations, not with scattered stars. We have to do with the 
whole tenor of Scripture, with the prolonged course of centuries of 
history, with the multitudinous testimonies of the human soul in 
many generations, with the arrangements and combinations of many 
events in one continuous and resplendent revelation of the glory of 
the Lord. — Idem, 248. 

If we analyze faith to see what it is, we shall find that it is, first, 
faith in persons. This is the faith of the child. Xext, it is faith in 
ideas, in laws, in principles. And, lastly, it is the union of both, 
faith in God, in whom law and love are one, — the Divine Being 
whose nature is truth, who is the sum of all the laws of the universe. 
By this faith we live, by this faith we grow, by' this faith we accom- 
plish everything, by this faith we are saved. We cease to be ani- 
mals as we arise out of sensation and sight into belief and trust in 
ideas. All great men, all the souls who govern the world and lead 
on society, are great in proportion to their strength of conviction. 
They act not by what they see, but by their strong confidence in what 
they do not see. . . . 

Salvation by faith is a universal law of the moral universe. It is 
no arbitrary enactment of Christianity alone, but it is based in the 
very nature of man. All moral and spiritual life comes from faith in 
things unseen. All real knowledge has its roots in faith. He who 
doubts is a lost soul; that is, he has lost his way. Jesus came to 
seek and save these lost souls by giving them some clear, strong 
convictions by which to live and die. Inspired by him, "all who are 
in their graves " hear his voice and come forth. The poor, suffering, 
lonely man, bereft of all, sick, in prison, condemned to die, is safe 
and happy if he has faith in God, truth, immortality. What can man 
do to him? He may have trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, 
yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. But his hope sustains 



1 6 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

him; for he believes that neither life nor death, nor things present 
nor things to come, can ever separate him from the love of God. 
What we need most of all and always is some great belief, some 
strong conviction, some realizing sense of spiritual things. Then, we 
are young, though years and cares have marked wrinkles on our 
brow. We are full of life, though on the verge of the tomb. We are 
happy, hopeful, contented, and have an inward peace which is better 
than all the treasures of this world. — Dr. J. F. Clarke {Common 
Sense in Religion, pp. y^ % 349). 

All moral teaching, then, whether within the Bible or with- 
out, addresses itself to the consciousness of the disciple. 
Neither Reason nor Faith is to be flouted at. Reasoning is 
not to be subordinate, but co-ordinate with the function of 
Faith ; Faith being defined as fidelity to religious conviction, 
and not merely as a synonyme of credulity. Thus, the prayer 
that the Holy Spirit may guide us into all truth imports the 
aspiration, — May Reason, combined with the good-will essen- 
tial to fair-mindedness, be the verifying faculty whereby we shall 
sift and appropriate the good-inspired in everything we read, 
the Bible not excepted. 

Truth and Beauty but impart 

Gleams to whom they can allure ; 
Onlv are the pure in heart 

Blest with insight of the pure. 

Celeste Shute Burnkam. 

Defining Reason as the faculty by which the mind distin- 
guishes truth from falsehood and good from evil, and which 
enables the possessor to deduce inferences from facts or from 
propositions, there must be, in its application to the study of 
the Bible, not only isolated analysis, but also critical compari- 
son of scriptures. Thus, in the unimportant inquiry, What did 
David pay for Araunah's threshing-floor? or, What was the 
footing of Joab's enumeration of Israel and Judah? one who 
had consulted only the last chapter of Second Samuel would 
give a more unsatisfactory answer than one who had also 
studied the twenty-first chapter of First Chronicles. Illustra- 
tions in more important questions will be adduced hereafter. 
Other instances will be suggested in comparing the new Eng- 
lish version with the King James. Especially is the composi- 
tional ground for discrimination apparent in the Old Testament 
and Apocrypha. 



INTERPRETATION 17 

Minor narratives were fused together one after the other ; and at 
length, in exile, a final redactor completed the great work, on the 
first part of which Ezra based his reformation, while the latter part 
was thrown into the second canon. The curious combination of the 
functions of copyist and author, which is here presupposed, did not 
wholly disappear till a pretty late date; and whereas, in the Books 
of Samuel, we have two recensions of the text, one in Hebrew and 
one in the Septuagint translation, the discrepancies are of such a 
kind that criticism of the text and analysis are separated by a 
scarcely perceptible line.* — Dr S. Davidson. 

And not only must the circumstances of the writers, but 
also those of the personages, be considered. 

At first, they knew him only as a village enthusiast, a Galilean 
teacher, at best a rabbi like other interpreters of the law, one of the 
school, perhaps, of Rabbi Hillel or Rabbi Simeon, like them setting 
the weightier matters of justice and mercy above the mint, anise, and 
cumin of current exposition. For a background to the under- 
standing of his discourses, we should know something of the wonder- 
ful, well-meaning pedantry of the rabbinical interpreters, and some- 
thing, too, of the genuine and wholesome ethics which the better sort, 
Hillel at their head, had tried to engraft upon it. . . . Only as an after- 
result came his strong conviction that he was the chosen deliverer of 
his people, though by a way they could not understand or follow. — 
Joseph H. Allen. 

The duty of reasoning is inculcated in the Westminster Con- 
fession : " The whole counsel of God concerning all things 
necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is 
either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and neces- 
sary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.' 7 

Often has the undue consideration of one passage to the 
exclusion of others been apparent in discussing ethical or 
political questions; as, for instance, the citing of alleged 
declarations of Noah in support of slavery or of capital 
punishment, similarly polygamy and intemperance. Indeed, 
almost every discovery in science has had to run a gauntlet of 
missiles moulded from such distorted materials. There be 
those who 

Would torture pages of the Bible 

To sanction whim or blood, 
And in Oppression's sen-ice libel 

Both man and God. 

*See Alleged Discrepancies, etc., by Dr. J. W. Haley. 

I 



1 8 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Hereto come two voices from Scotland : — 

I look into the Scriptures with humble hope of extracting a rule of 
conduct and a law of salvation. But I expect to find this by an ex- 
amination of their general tenor and of the spirit which they uni- 
formly breathe, and not by wresting particular passages from their 
context or by the application of Scriptural phrases to circumstances 
with which they have often very slender relation. — Sir Walter Scott 
{Old Mortality, chap. 21). 

When a few more years are past, Buckland and Sedgwick, Lyell, 
Jameson, and the group of brave men who accompanied and followed 
them, will be looked back to as moral benefactors to their race, and 
almost as martyrs also, when it is remembered how much misunder- 
standing, obloquy, and plausible folly they had to endure from well- 
meaning fanatics, like Fairholme or Granville Penn and the respect- 
able mob at their heels, who tried, as is the fashion in such cases, to 
make a hollow compromise between fact and the Bible by twisting 
facts just enough to make them fit the fancied meaning of the Bible, 
and the Bible just enough to make it fit the fancied meaning of the 
facts. — Hugh Miller. 

The Church of Rome fought long and desperately against the 
Copernican system of astronomy, which seemed to conflict with a 
scrap of poetry in the Book of Joshua. It issued bulls to make the 
earth stand still, a significant symbol of what theology has often 
attempted. It was a vain contest: Rome might imprison Galileo, 
but "the stars in their courses " fought against Ptolemy, and Rome 
was finally forced to yield. The poetry of Joshua was allowed to be 
poetry, and the facts of astronomy were allowed to be facts. In our 
own time, a similar battle has been waged by theology against geol- 
ogy, in the interest of another scrap of poetry in the Book of Genesis. 
Geology discovers that it took a good while to make the world, more 
than a week, more than a year, more than a hundred thousand years; 
but theology insists on making a week's work of it, and fancies the 
credit of the Bible involved in that despatch. — Dr. F. H. Hedge. 

Dr. N. Smyth and others detect upon the surface of the Gen- 
esis narrative signs of a mnemonic purpose. — a first lesson 
made easy before the days of printing-presses. 

That the volume outlasts misuse and outrage by both friend 
and foe is proof that there is in it somewhere and somehow a 
mighty preservative leaven. The Sermon on the Mount will 
survive as long as human conduct needs guidance or human 
sorrows beatitude. 

Dwelt there no divineness in us, 
How should God's divineness win us? 



INTERPRETATION I 9 

But no one can habitually utilize reason in seeking 

How to o'errule the hard divorce 
Which parts things natural and divine, 

without being constantly reminded of Dr. H. Ballou's aph- 
orism : — . 

Nothing is more easy than simple religious sensibility, nothing 
more difficult than sound religious principle. 

Or of the two not wholly dissimilar definitions : — 

Religion is living all the truths we possess! — Augusta Cooper Bristol. 

Religion is the practical recognition of God : Christianity is the 
practical recognition of God in Christ. — Rev. Henry Shute. 

More recently has this co-operation of the intellect, the sen- 
sibilities, and the will, in Biblical interpretation, found further 
pithy expression : — 

One must have what I can only describe as the faith-temper, a delicate 
and disciplined sensitiveness and loyalty to the spiritual aspects of life. 
This temper will express itself in one man in a very definite belief in 
a personal God and a personal immortality. Another man, in whom 
the faith-temper is no less fine and deep, will hesitate to define God 
as " personal," or to affirm how much of its present elements the soul 
carries into its future life. But in both of these men there will be a 
spirit of reverence, humility, passive trust, and active loyalty toward 
some transcendent and divine reality. It is a spirit hard to analvze 
or define ; but, whenever a man has it, it is felt by those he meets, felt 
more quickly, more powerfully, more beneficently, than almost any 
other personal trait. If a preacher has this, the reality of faith, of 
which a theological creed is but a shadow or simulacrum, it will per- 
vade his sermons, his prayers, his words and tones and gestures, as 
subtly as the perfume of a flower, as vitally as the air that feeds the 
life of man. Whatever ideas, whatever methods he may employ, his 
people will be helped and uplifted by him ; they will get the " en- 
larged horizon," the "transfiguring view," and in their own lives and 
characters some transfigurations will be wrought. — Geo. S. Merriam 
{Christian Register, March 2. 1882). 

Now let five " woman-wise " witnesses conclude the chapter : 

Reason, guided by humility and reverence, is never " unassisted." 
"Every good gift cometh from above." — Lydia M. Child. 

O thou of little faith, lift up thine eyes! 

Are the ten thousand glowing stars of night 

But a vain dream, because thy feeble sight 
May not behold them in the noonday skies ? Mary Howitt. 



20 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

However deep be the mysterious word, 
However dark, she disbelieves it not : 
Where Reason would examine, Faith obeys, 
And " It is written " answers even- doubt. 

Caroline Fay. 
Two travellers started on a tour 

With trust and knowledge laden : 
One was a man with mighty brain, 

And one a gentle maiden. 
They joined their hands, and vowed to be 

Companions for a season. 
The gentle maiden's name was Faith, 
The mighty man's was Reason. 

He sought for truth above, below, 

All hidden things revealing : 
She only sought it woman-wise, 

And found it in her feeling. 
He said, " This earth's a rolling ball, 

And so doth science prove it 
He but discovered that it moves, 

She found the springs that move it. 

All things in beauty, science, art, 

In common they inherit ; 
But he has only clasped the form, 

While she has clasped the spirit. 
God's wall infinite now looms up 

Before Faith and her lover: 
But, while he tries to scale its heights, 

She has gone safely over. 

He tries from earth to forge a key 

To ope the gate of heaven : 
That key is in the maidtt 

And back its bolts are driven. 
They part. Without her, all is dark, 

His knowledge vain and hoi! 
For Faith has entered in with * 

Where Reason may not follow. 

Lizzie York Case. 

Perhaps, however, in a future chapter, we shall conclude 
that Reason will eternally keep company with Faith ; and this, 
without denying the testimony of Dr. Edward Young, that 

Swift Instinct leaps, slow Reason feebly climbs; 

although John Dryden's inquiry, "How can finite grasp 
infinity ? " may have to go unanswered. 

Life grows dark as we go on, till only one clear light is left shining 
on it ; and that is faith. — Atina S. Soymonof Swetchin. 



Chapter II. 



CONSECUTION. 



What is the Chronological Order of the Early Records of the 
Life and Teachings of Jesics f 

The data necessary for precisely determining this are not 
available. The first New Testament was compiled by Mar- 
cion, A.D. 145. It contained ten Epistles of Paul. He knew 
of no Epistles to Timothy, to Titus, or to the Hebrews ; or, if 
he did know of them, he did not consider them genuine. It 
had but one Gospel. This closely resembled Luke, but was 
much shorter. Canon Westcott, Baring-Gould, Griesbach, and 
Schleiermacher acquit Marcion of the charge of using — or at 
least of corrupting — the Luke Gospel. The three most an- 
cient Gospels now extant are, according to Judge Waite,* the 
Protevangelion, circa 125 A.D.; an Aramaic Gospel, called by 
Origen the " Book of James " ; the Gospel of the Infancy, 
c. 130 A.D. ; and the Acts of Pilate, c. 130 A.D. One copy of 
the last, containing many patristic interpolations, is known as 
the " Gospel of Nicodemus." The two first-named Gospels 
have also many interpolations. They are, however, supposed 
by recent collators, named by the last-cited author, to afford 
evidence of interpolations in the four canonical Gospels in the 
final redactions thereof. But earlier Biblical students have 
been of the opinion that those three uncanonical Gospels are 
wholly fabrications gotten up to "fill the bill" as to certain 
references made by Justin Martyr, c. 150 A.D., to Gospels of 
those names respectively. Partial exceptions may be men- 
tioned. Thus, Bishop Ellicott,f while rejecting the rest, 
accepts the Acts of Pilate. Some have thought that portions 
of Luke were taken from the Protevangelion.:]: 

* History of the Christian Religion to the Year 200. By Charles B. Waite. 
Chicago, 1 88 1. 

t Cambridge Essay, 1856. 

% See Schleiermacher 071 Luke, p. 24. 



22 



RFX'ORDS 






As to the chronological order of the canonical New Testa- 
ment records, students differ. * After citing Prof. 

herf in support of a view that the Fourth Gospel could not 
have appeared Liter than irs after th< ring of 

the Rev. Jos .at "the upper 

date of A.D. 34 and the lower date 1 • stablished 

by exact r< are the two merciless bla be- 

n which the latest and n. of doubt is 

cut in two. [Applause.]" { 

The foil table pr 

::am K 
Leiden,| a e Waite. above 



1 1. < 

I 

1 
Phil 

I 
I 

































5 s 














64 








I60 




9° 




69 


68 


'5 




10O 




IDO 


80 






80 


70 and 100 




180 


. . 


1 DO 




















l 3P 










! DO 




130 













% T ntalism, \ 

: Hooykaj 



CONSECUTION 23 

Davidson. Kuenen. Waite. 

II. John, A.D. 131 Before 150 (?) 130 

III. John, . . . . : 131 Before 150(F) 130 

John, 150 Before 150 (?) 178 

II. Peter, 170 After 150 (?) 170 

It is not within the scope of this Manual to set forth the 
grounds of different writers' conclusions as to what is the 
actual order of these records.* It may, however, be for occa- 
sional convenience here to note Dr. Kuenen's order of por- 
tions of the older Jewish literature. 

Before the Assyrian Period : the " Decalogue " ; Song of Deborah 
(Judges v.); David's Poems (II. Samuel i., 19-27 and iii., 33,34); 
Genesis xlix. ; " Book of the Covenant " (Exodus xxi., i-xxiii., 19). 

In the Assyrian period, circiter 800-700 B.C.: Psalm xlv.; Deut- 
eronomy xxxiii. ; Numbers xxii.-xxiv. ; Amos; Hosea ; Zechariah 
ix.-xi.; certain narratives in the Pentateuch, in Judges, and in Sam- 
uel; Song of Solomon; Micah; part of Isaiah, of the Proverbs, and 
of Deuteronomy. 

In the Chaldean Period, c. 700-500 B.C.: Nahum ; Zephaniah ; 
Zechariah xii.-xiv.; Habakkuk; Jeremiah; many of the Psalms; 
earliest edition of Joshua; Judges; Samuel; Kings; Lamentations; 
Isaiah xl.-lxvi. ; xiv., 4-21; xxxv., e'c. ; Jeremiah li., Iii. 

In the Persian Period, c. 500-300 B.C. : Haggai; Zechariah i.-ix. ; 
Joel ; Book of Origins ; many of the priestly laws in Leviticus and 
Numbers ; Ruth ; Jonah ; Malachi ; Job ; many of the Psalms and 
Proverbs. 

In the Greek Period, 300-50 B.C : final edition of the Pentateuch 
and Joshua; Chronicles; Ezra; Nehemiah; Esther; many of the 
Psalms; Proverbs of Jesus ben Sirach; Ecclesiastes ; Daniel; 
Psalms xliv., lxxiv., cxviii. ; Baruch ; Epistle of Jeremiah ; oldest 
portions of the Book of Enoch ; I. and II. Maccabees ; additions to 
Esther; Tobit; Prayer of Manasseh. 

In the Roman Period: (B.C.) Psalms of Solomon; Ascension cf 
Moses; (A.D.) Susanna; Bel and the Dragon; III. Maccabees; Wis- 
dom; Philemon; IV. Maccabees ; Book of Jubilees ; Judith; Apoca- 
lypse of Baruch; IV. Esdras; Josephus ; The Talmudic Mishna. — 
The Bible for Learners, vol. iii., p. 697. (For other tabulations, see 
Rev. G. F. Piper's Sunday-school Lessons, etc., Part II., pp. 55, 71, and 
83. Also Rev. J. W. Chadwick's The Bible of To-day, pp. xv.-xviii.) 

A single illustration of the mode of determining relative 
dates must suffice. Take Daniel : Jesus ben Sirach, c. 200 
B.C., makes no mention of Daniel or of his three friends, 
although a place might have been given them with such per- 

*See II. Kings xxi., 13; xxii., xxiii. ; II. Chronicles xxxiv., 14-32; II. Macca" 
bees ii., 13, 14; iii., 3; Ecclesiasticus. 



24 RECOR REVIEWED 

feet appropriateness in hi of the Fathe 

(chap, xliv.j. In the Hebrew I - not placed among 

the prophets, but in the thir 

.pha, and ig them 4 

trie! aU i in the n, but in i.-vi. in the 

linary pur] lall more con peak 

icnt canor. 
thou nth but approxima In tr . 

: — 

i udca 
did 
which 
and ccs, 

rung 
the 

Th* 

were read and 

. and 

unpi 

specially sa< 
i the I 

the 
drill 



CONSECUTION 25 

around the law. The heroic warrior recovers the sacred rolls which 
the "Madman of Syria" had left unburned. The scribe sits in 
Moses' seat. Already, the soil is prepared by the Roman plough- 
shares for the seeds of a better faith. But the life of the true religion 
must first, it would seem, return into itself, become dry in the hard 
kernel of Judaism, be buried in the ground, and die, before it can 
rise again in the new vigor of Christianit , and bear the ripe fruit of 
the gospel iir the world. — Dr. Newman S?nyth (Old Faiths in New 
Light, p. 80). 

The Bible is not like a chain, the whole of which is no stronger 
than its weakest link, than some casual, uncritical remark in its his- 
tory, chronology, astronomy, or geology. ... It is various because life 
is various. It touches somewhere all parts of human life. It often 
seems inconsistent with itself, just as life is inconsistent. One pas- 
sage appears to contradict another, just as some of our earthly experi- 
ences seem opposed to others. The Bible aims at no logical con- 
sistence, at no metaphysical or systematic coherence. It is too large, 
too full, too wide in its sweep and scope, to fit itself to anv of our 
creeds. It sometimes speaks of divine providence, as if God^did 
everything and man nothing. We are the clay, and he is the potter. 
And, then, it speaks of man's ability, as if he had power to convert 
himself by the mere force of his own will. Sometimes, it cries, 
"Create in me a new heart, and renew a right spirit within me." And, 
in other places, it says, " Repent, and be converted " ; " Make to your- 
selves a new heart and a new spirit." The breadth of the Bible is 
perhaps one of its most wonderful qualities. Every creed finds sup- 
port in it: every Church has its proof-texts in it. This, which has 
been brought as an objection, is one of its chief glories. — Dr. J. F. 
Clarke (Sermon of Nov. 26, 1882). 



Chaptkr III. 



I' I RAT 



\\ r ihit Tw :, /e 

latural : that tl. lin supernatural 

ne will upon their minds, wl 
set forth truth with no admixture 

Whit el enunciate it, — 

ey wrote u 

extr but v 

well I I : — 

truth: one is perception or 

look 

of 1 

tion wit »ere 

the 

pro] x < this ^ 

with 

the »pher. ! 

The i 
quality in all La 

and 

from 

with 



INSPIRATION 27 

true because it is inspired, but we say it is inspired because it is true. 
It is a book, we may safely say, that will never be superseded, any 
more than Homer, Dante, Shakspere, will be superseded. It will 
grow in interest immensely, in proportion as we study it intelligently 
and freely. When we make no extravagant claims for it, but let it 
rest on its own merits, infidelity will cease to attack it. If there is 
anything in it you do not understand, wait until you do. If there is 
anything you cannot beiieve, pass it by. There is enough left which 
you can believe. 

The Bible is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for 
instruction in righteousness. It has guided men to God through all 
these long centuries; it has civilized humanity, sustained mourners, 
comforted sorrow, created happy homes, made family life peaceful, 
awakened an interest in truth, quickened the intellect, opened heaven 
to the dying, and given hope in the midst of despair. A book that 
does this does not need to be propped up by theological theories : it 
can stand and walk alone, and take care of itself. It does not need 
to be protected by laws against blasphemy : the love and gratitude 
of men are a sufficient protection. It does not need to be made a 
master, to enslave the intellect: the more free our thought is to 
inquire and examine, the more we shall come to honor it, to love it, 
and to believe in it. Why is not this enough ? Why manufacture 
a theory of inspiration to strengthen that which is already strong 
enough without it ? It is as though you should erect a wooden scaf- 
fold round the Great Pyramid to hold it up. 

Inspiration is insight, and insight is immediate knowledge. The 
inspired poet sees beauty, the inspired prophet sees truth. Knowl- 
edge carries its own evidence. He who knows anything thoroughly 
becomes an authority to us. That is enough. . . . You go to the 
Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. You take a guide, perhaps the guide 
Stephen, a colored man, formerly a slave, — an ignorant man. You 
know nothing of him but this, that he has guided hundreds of travel- 
lers before you, and has guided them safelv. You enter the myste- 
rious chambers. Passages diverge in all directions. Still, you follow 
through the great darkness his feeble lamp. You descend precipices, 
you climb ladders, you come to a river and cross it in a boat beneath 
an overhanging roof of rock. You go on and on, mile after mile, 
until you seem to have left forever the day and upper air. Immense 
darkness, perpetual night, undisturbed silence, broods around. You 
are many miles from the entrance. If your guide has made any 
mistake, you are lost. But you follow him with entire confidence. 
Why? Do you believe him to be plenarily inspired? Do you think 
him infallible? Not at all. But you trust in his long experience. 
He has guided travellers safely for years, and that is enough. So the 
Bible has guided the footsteps of travellers seeking truth and God. 
It has brought generation after generation out of darkness into light. 
It leads us through the mysterious depths of our own experience. It 
goes sounding on along the dim and perilous way of human life. 



28 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

It points out on either side the false paths which would lead you to 
death. It speaks with authority, a far higher than that of a thec- 
al infallibility. It is full of the spirit of God. which is the 
spirit of truth; and \er is n<>t dependent on the theories of 

inspiration which the Church may d rat on its own immortal 

life, me elev. rig the iodand 

to ] Dr. J. F. Clar i>e in R 

93» 9 

Other eloqi the natural t have not 

been a : jually i ul to d ration from 

eption : — 

and ap e not 

mm. the Father. He i is much as 

•t, hundi 
- before 

e of the inquir prophet 

d qootation h 

iiout marring: — * 

- 
dge 

that G -I must fa 

into the mi e on the 

of the I 
but an ii 

resight of the future. 
lie 

that wl. ; the phi 

oometh, and now is.* 1 This is ti - future h 

the in the ackw: r . he wh 

knows the "hour which D predict * 4 the hour 

cometh." Thus, Columl rith the geography of the 

ore the md 

• re the < - « 

wou " I do not beli the 

em. 

for they are 

this; but I t ual 

righ o evil to 

the seer, a at > the present, bee and 

is able to look into th 



INSPIRATION 29 

Is prophecy, then, only the exercise of common sagacity ? No, 
but of uncommon sagacity. It is a human sagacity made divine by 
a heavenly influence. Inspiration does not create the faculty of fore- 
sight, Jput develops it in a high degree. The prophet, under the influ- 
ence of this divine power, foresees what to others is unseen. There- 
fore, the prophet is often disliked and hated, stoned and persecuted, 
because he announces coming woes and punishments. He is called 
a fanatic and a madman; he ''trouble-; Israel"; he disturbs the 
slumbers and the comforts of those who only care for the present. 
When he speaks of the judgment to come, Felix trembles, and says, 
" At a more c mvenient season, I will listen to thee." 

Inspiration gives knowledge of the substance of truth, but leaves 
the prophet fallible in regard to the circumstances. Thus, the pro- 
phetic soul of Columbus saw truly that by sailing west he would 
arrive at a continent ; but he supposed it would be Asia, when in fact 
it was America. Theodore Parker wrote a letter to John P. Hale, 
in 1856, in which he said: "If Buchanan is president I think the 
Union does not hold out his four years. It must end in civil war." 
Buchanan was chosen president ; the Union did not hold out to the 
end of his term ; civil war did come. So far, Parker foresaw what 
hardly any one else did at that time. But he was mistaken as to the 
circumstances; for he predicted the "worst fighting at the North, 
between the friends of freedom and the Hunkers," which never 
came, since nine-tenths of the so-called Hunkers ceased to be 
Hunkers, turned around and defended the Union, and the other 
tenth was silenced. 

Paul's inspiration led him to foresee the coming of Jesus as the 
Christ, to make a new heaven and a new earth. In that, he foresaw 
the truth; for Christ has come, is coming, and will come more and 
more. Paul was right in foreseeing the coming manifestation {parou- 
sia) of Jesus as the Christ. But, in his earl est letcers written to the 
Thessalonians, he seems to have looked for an outward, visible 
coming in the air, with audible sounds and accompanying marvels. 
Afterward, he appears to have dismissed these expectations, and 
speaks of sitting in heavenlv places now with Christ Jesus; speaks 
of being already risen with him; speaks of Christ within, the hope 
of glorv. His inspiration, which gave to him to foresee the essential 
truth, did not prevent him, for a time, from unessential error. — Dr. 
J. F. Clarke {The Ideas of Paid, Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, 
May j, 1881). 

Similarly, in answer to the question as to Paul, has an emi- 
nent "Free-Religious Anglican" written: — 

Wher-% then, is the force of that argument of despair, as we caKed 
it, that, if St. Paul vouches for the bod ly resurrection of Jesus and for 
his appearance after it, and is mistaken in so vouching, then he 
must be an imbecile and credulous enthusiast, untruthful, unprofita- 
ble? We see that for a man to believe in preternatural incidents, of 



30 RE( 



a kind admitted by the common belief of his time, proves nothing at 
all against his general truthfulness and sagacity we see that, 

even while affirming such preternatural incidents, he m: pro- 

found insight seize the true and natural aspect of them, the ,aspect 
which will survive and profit when the miraculous aspect has faded, 
lie may give us, in the \ >rk, current error and also fruit- 

ful and profound new truth, the error's future corrective. — 
Arnold ( 

Man 
interpretation nine texts. — Dr. 

truth abased. — 

Aristotle Fj r without some 

admixt md or superior to 

the voice of common mort ded 

soul." And Mr. • We m 

ve were in them, not they in 
US. W I oursei fortune in an illuminated 

portion of i i out of it again, so a) 

principle or said 

Napoleon, "that, when you can use the lightning, tter 

than 

In studying in 

point. t it all nv. 

powers an I r to one 

side of us than to another: and, ther 

spirit, with all ly unto ( iod in 

order n m him. ier 

the manifoldnt of 

our possible Impn us behind 

and be I ;.)CCt that ela- 

ti mi from God would be a divine I 

times and in di ct to find it 

a great dlvt I manifold influence in hur 

pressing in upon man from different sides of his complex 

being, mou . forming hi 

Similarly, Max Muller has remark ready 
made and given to men. like a Ian ed in heaven, 
would have pon that men could not under- 
stand. And Trot. W. the majc 

* Let 

t Ltkre der £ 101. 

-S, p. 709. 



INSPIRATION 31 

theologians treat the word of God as a book of oracles, so long 
will it appear as a book of fables to the majority of the edu- 
cated laity." And Dr. Newman Smyth : — 

We fall into hopeless contradictions, if we begin by regarding the 
Bible as a text-book of divinity. 'It is rather a book of life ; and we 
must discover its meanings as we would study the mysteries of nature 
or interpret the changeful drama of life. Jesus regarded the truth 
of revelation as a word to be done.* Revelation is pre-eminently 
truth which has been done in history. The Bible certainly presents 
a spectacle of the contests of embodied truths with falsehoods 
clothed in human forms; a spectacle in which we behold right and 
wrong coming and going in a prophet's mantle or the armor of 
a king ; where we see truth succeeding, and error dying, in the issues 
of human lives and the rise and fall of kingdoms. The great doc- 
trines of the Bible are vividly revealed through its characters and 
their work, and in the progress of the whole history. In this book 
for all peoples and ages, the most abstract and impalpable truths 
seem taken, as it were, from the very air, from distant realms of the 
spirit, and clothed with flesh and blood; they are revealed walking 
with men, dwelling in their homes, made concrete and visible in the 
person of patriarch, prophet, or apostle; and they are summed up 
and declared in the vernacular of every man's heart, in the Word 
made rlesh — Old Faiths in New Light, p. 37. 

There is no other entrance to the kingdom of man, which is founded 
in the sciences, than to the kingdom of heaven into which no one can 
enter but in the character of a little child. — Francis Bacon. 

The word by seers or sibyls told, 
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, 
Stiil floats upon the morning wind, 
Still whispers to the willing mind. 
One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost. 

Ralph IV. Emerson. 

♦John iii., 21. 



Chapter IV. 

COMPOSITION. 

What Two Diverse Opinions as to the Circu?nsta?ices of the 
Writing and of the Writers of the Four Canonical Gospels t 

(i) The evangelical: that the first, second, and fourth were 
penned respectively by three disciples of Christ, and the third 
by a personal acquaintance. 

(2) The traditional: that the three Synoptic ("together- 
view ") Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are simple, un- 
apostolic digests of earlier traditions. 

Matthew consists of (1) the Triple Tradition; (2) extracts from 
a book or tradition of the words of the Lord, from which Luke also 
borrowed; and (3) an introduction, framework, and appendix, all 
added by one hand; though possibly the introduction and appendix, 
being borrowed; the former from an Aramaic source, may show dif- 
ferences of idiom not wholly concealed by the overlying style of the 
author who works up the materials. — Dr. Edwin A. Abbott {Ency- 
clopedia Britannica, vol. x., p. 805, article " Gospels," note). 

Convenience dictates that we designate the four as Mat- 
thew's, Mark's, Luke's, and John's, respectively, whatever may 
have been their authorship. As to that of the Fourth Gospel, 
very elaborate arguments have lately been published both for 
and against its genuineness ; each side finding it not very easy, 
in procuring data for their premises, to resist a tendency 
" to draw," as Lightfoot somewhere expresses it, <; unlimited 
checks on the bank of the unknown." As to its date, indus- 
trious investigators differ all along between 100 and 17S A.D. 
Theodor Keim says 130 A.D.;* Daniel Schenkel, 11 5-120 A.D. f 

Dr. Matthew Arnold argues very ingeniously, both "from 
without " and " from within," that the Fourth Gospel had a 
"redactor," who was a Gnostic disciple of St. John. % So, too, 
M. D. Conway, mentioning the original of the wrongly trans- 
lated passage, John viii., 44, " He is a liar, and so is his father," 

*Gei ' sn», etc., 1S75, p. 40. 

t D<is Charakterbild Jes 3 70. 

% God and the Bible, chaps, v. and vi. 



COMPOSITION 33 

as indicating the Gnostic Demiurge ; mentioning also the style 
of John xi., 42. * 

And as to the omission of the Sermon on the Mount, Mr. 
Conway thinks " the homely, every-day virtues of that sermon 
were too human, too commonplace, to arrest the attention of 
a speculative enthusiast, absorbed in the tremendous work of 
remodelling the theosophic schools of Egypt and Greece, har- 
monizing their divisions, and solving the problems of ages." 
The words u Salvation is of the Jews " he deems a Jewish 
interpolation, in the noble utterance to the Samaritan woman 
upon worship : " This bit of bigotry remains there like an 
insect in translucent amber." He also cautions us to make 
allowance for " Luke's polemical attitude toward the Jews, 
and slightly speculative tendency toward Greek superstition." 

From thirty to forty years after the death of Jesus, the tradition of 
his life and ministry and death had shaped itself into the basis of our 
present Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The contents of this 
fundamental tradition — fundamental to our Gospels, but in its turn, 
no doubt, the result of various accretions — are as flattering to the 
anti-supernaturalist as he could reasonably expect. Accounts of mir- 
acles are here, even some of the most startling ; but there is not a 
hint of the miraculous birth of Jesus nor of the legends of his in- 
fancy, and the tradition ends with the discovery that his tomb is 
empty, without a word to signalize that he was seen again by any 
woman or disciple. In this tradition, the personality of Jesus is 
revealed in lines so firm and strong that the accretions of a later 
time add little to their force. The man behind the myth is there, no 
thin abstraction, but an individual with blood in his veins, and in his 
heart the love of human kind. — J. W. Chadwick {The Man Jesus, 
P. 34). 

The traditional view of the composition of the four Gospels 
may be better understood by considering also that of some of 
the other books. Dr. Newman Smyth, who regards the Bible 
as "a growth slowly matured under the influence of both 
natural and supernatural forces," refers to the composite 
structure of Genesis, and contrasts Ezra, the editor, with the 
royal shepherd-poet : — 

Very much as the wooc£ cutter can judge, from the successive 
layers of wood laid bare by his axe, how many seasons the tree has 
been growing, so a close scrutiny of the Bible shows unmistakable 
signs of the different ages and conditions of its growth. . . . However 
the spirit of God may have used for his higher purposes the minds of 
men, we can be assured that he did not overpower their natural 

* Idols and Ideals, App. Essay, p. 8. 



34 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

habits of expression, or hold individual genius, as one might catch 
a song-bird, passive and palpitating, in the grasp of his Almighty 
hand. . . . The successive sparks of divine illumination were struck, 
all of them, out of the necessities of the times. — Old Faiths in Xew 
Light, pp. 39, 43. 

Similarly another, as to the Acts and the Epistles : — 

Little did St. Paul pause to consider how his confidential utter- 
ances, born of the pressing exigencies of the moment, might be 
turned into the formulae of a literal creed. He was writing for the 
needs of the hour, and thus gives us, unwittingly, a chapter from the 
history of his own times. . . . The value of his letters for religious 
inspiration is indeed very great. But, we should bear in mind that 
they were designed to meet special questions and special difficulties. 

By about A.D. 64, all Paul' es had probably been written. 

They constituted, so far as is known, the entire Christian literature 
of that period. Soon after his deatn appeared the Epistle t 
Hebrews, written by some unknown person who sympathized with 
Paul in believing that the old covenant was virtually - >d by 

the new. But he differed from Paul in putting an allegorical interpre- 
tation upon the Old Testament. Everything there 1 .is but 
a type of something to be fulfilled in the Church of Christ. But 
other writers took other views. . . . The Epistle of Jame> 
written to counteract the tendency of Paul's doctrine as to the 
efficacy «»f faith. Avoiding all metaphysical discussion, he add: 
himself with great beauty and force of language to the purely practi- 
cal side of Christian duty, and, like many a preacher of reconciliation 
to-day, urges the followers of Cht their w ^puta- 
tions and devote themselves to good works. Peculiar 
though Jewish in sentiment, tfa se appeared before the fall 
of Jerusalem, and predicted the coming <a the Messiah. 

But the Messiah did n <ind the little band of Christians 

must address themselves to the >f the present. They 

must organize, and collect for immediate use the teachings and 
memories of their Master. No memorand rd or act 

kept, and the companions and witnesses of his ministry had been 
dropping away year by year. Certain local traditions survived, and 
many personal reminiscences hid been orally transmitted. But these 
were vague and contradictory. They did not aeree, for instance, 
whether the family of Christ sprang from Bethlehem or from 
reth, whether his ministry lasted one year or three vears, whether he 
taught chiefly in Jerusalem or almost entirely in Galilee. But. 
as they were, these traditions were collected, freed from their more 
palpable legendary accretions, and woven into the form : aphi- 

cal sketches or collections of the Master's • when 

this was first done, we cannot tell. But we know (Luke i., 1) that 
many had taken in hand to set forth in order 

things which were most surely believed; and that, of these numerous 
collections, three, to which in the second century the names of Mat- 



COMPOSITION 35 

thew, Mark, and Luke were attached, have survived, and give us 
the best knowledge we have of the beginnings of Christianity. 

Soon after these three Gospels were written, the author of the 
third undertook to collect all the traditions still existing as to the 
lives of the apostles and the fortunes of the early Church. The 
materials for this compilation were also fragmentary and vague ; but 
the book, as it stands, is our first ecclesiastical history. This is the 
Book of the Acts, which, like all historical narratives written in an 
uncritical age, betrays clearly enough the writer's own feelings and 
opinions. Consciously or unconsciously, it is written in a harmoniz- 
ing spirit, to reconcile the conflicting tendencies of the Church. 

But there was another school of theology besides that of the rabbis, 
whose influence, after Paul's time, imposed itself more and more 
upon Christianity. At Alexandria, in Egypt, had long existed a 
school of thinkers of Greek descent, inheriting the methods and tra- 
ditions of Platonic philosophy; and with this school the Jewish Chris- 
tians in Egypt had been brought for several generations into close 
contact. Prominent among these Hellenistic Jews was one Philo, 
who sought by means of allegorical interpretation to make the Mosaic 
scriptures the vehicle of philosophic mysticism. In the same spirit, 
another follower of the same school sought to interpret the new phe- 
nomena of Christianity; and in the Fourth Gospel we have Christianity 
pervaded by the spirit of the Alexandrian philosophy. Here, the inci- 
dents of the earlier Gospels are given with their interior significance ; 
their kingdom of heaven is a spiritual realm; their Messiah is the 
pre-existent world. A tradition of the second century ascribes this 
Gospel to the Apostle John. There are manv difficulties in the way 
of this supposition, and not least among them is the difficulty of 
supposing that a disciple who had the training of a Galilean fisher- 
man, and who during his Master's lifetime begged a place at his 
Master's side in the Messianic kingdom, should, in his old age, prove 
the most spiritually-minded of Christ's followers, and deeply versed 
in mystic philosophy. — E. H. Hall [Saratoga Essay, 1880). 

Prof. Ezra Abbot exhaustively considers four points of his- 
torical evidence of the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 
namely : (1) The general reception of the Four Gospels as 
genuine among Christians in the last quarter of the second 
century ; (2) The question respecting the inclusion of the 
Fourth Gospel in the Apostolical Memoirs of Christ appealed 
to by Justin Martyr; (3) Its use by the various Gnostic sects ; 
(4) The attestation to this Gospel which has come down to us 
appended to the book itself. The few statements made by 
Justin, in his two " Apologies " written to the Roman emperor 
and senate, c. 147 A.D., that are not authorized by the Four 
Gospels, — e.g., that Jesus was born in a cave, that the Magi 
came from Arabia, and that Jesus made ploughs and yokes, — 
Prof. Abbot would explain as "founded on oral tradition, or 



36 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

as examples of that substitution of inferences from facts for 
the facts themselves, which we find in so many ancient and 
modern writers, and observe in every-day life.' 

Several of Justin's additions of detail seem to have pro- 
ceeded from his assumptions of the fulfilment of what he 
regarded as Old Testament prophecy. 

It has been observed that each of the four evangelists aims 
not merely to give a biography, but also to maintain his own 
particular thesis: Matthew, that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah ; 
Mark, that he was the son of God; Luke, that a Catholic 
Christianity is possible, inclusive of Petrine and Pauline ele- 
ments ; John, that Jesus was the incarnate Word of God.t 

Between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel, Mr. Chad- 
wick has drawn a well-contrasted parallel, substantially as 
follows : — 

la the Synoptics, Judaism, the temple, the law, the Messianic 
kingdom, are omnipresent. In John, they are remote and vague. In 
Matthew, Jesus is always yearning over his own nation. In John, he 
often has for it a sentiment of scorn. In Muthew, the sanction of 
the prophets is his great credential. In John, his dignity can tolerate 
no previous approximation: all that came before him were "thieves 
and robbers." . . . The Synoptics represent him as dying on the 15th 
Nisan, and as eating the paschal supper on the 14th. John repre- 
sents him as dying 01 the 14th, and as not partaking of the passover 
at all. His cleansing of the temple is, in the Synaptics, the climax 
of his opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy, and the immediate pre- 
cursor of his arrest and crucifixion. John puts it at the beginning 
of his ministry. The S.noptics confine his ministrv principally to 
Galilee, and bring him up to Jerusalem at the end. In John, his 
ministrv is mainly in Judea. In the Svnoptics, his ministry is only 
one year long; in John, from two to three. In the Synoptic- 
have a natural and human representation of the Jew-, some stiffly 
orthodox, others liberal. In John, they are the chief priests and 
Pharisees: the Sadducees, the Herodians the scribes, so prominent 
in the Synoptics, do not appear a: all. In the Synoptics, the empha- 
sis is upon conduct ; in John, upon belief. In the Synoptics, mira- 
cles are acts of mercy. In John, they are manifestations of the 
divine glory. The Synoptics narrate. John demonstrates. — S 
Bible of To-day, pp. 291-294. 

In view of these distinct characteristics, some writers have 
sought to set forth the early schools of Christian doctrine as 
four: (1) the Jewish, of James and Peter; (2) the Gentile, 
of Paul; (3) the Alexandrian, of [Apollos?] the writer of the 

* Tk 

t See Mi 10. 



COMPOSITION" 37 

Epistle to the Hebrews; and (4) the intuitional of John. This 
may be adverted to in a future chapter. 

The idea of the Logos or Word came into Jewish thought from 
two sides, — from Persia by way of Babylon, from Greece by way of 
Alexandria. The Persian-Zoroastrian religion taught that God created 
all things by his Word. The cosmology in Genesis is of Persian 
origin. "God said, Let there be light ; and there was light." His 
word is the creative power. Before the time of Jesus, tnis Word 
of God had become personified in Jewish thought, most frequently 
under the name of Wisdim. " Wisdom hath been created before all 
things," we read in Proverbs, also in Ecclesiasticus; and in the 
Wisdom of Solomon, "She is a reflection of the everlasting light, 
the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his good- 
ness." The Greek influence contributed to the same tendency of 
thought. The later followers of Plato, the Neo-Platonists, had per- 
sonified his doctrine of the divine idea or reason. They called it 
the first-born Son of God, born before the creation of the world, 
itself the agent of creation. It was the image of God's perfection, 
the mediator between God and man. Philo-Judaeus, who was born 
about twenty years before Jesus, was possessed with these ideas, and 
endeavored to connect them with the Old Testament teachings. He 
quoted, "Let us make man in our own image," to prove that God 
had an assistant who did all the work, thus saving God from any- 
contact with matter, — a necessity of the Persian system imported into 
Jewish thought. He calls the Logos the "first-born Son of God," 
"Second God," and even "God," but this always in a qualitative, 
never in a quantitative sense. 

On the one hand, then, the writer of the Fourth Gospel found this 
doctrine of the Logos; and, on the other hand, he found a conception 
of Jesus expressed in terms the most exalted, and bearing a very 
strong resemblance to the terms of the Logos doctrine of Philo. 
True, Phiio had never dreamed of a human incarnation of the Logos ; 
and Paul had n^ver identified his exalted Christ with the Alexan- 
drian Word. The first to do this was pretty certainly not the writer 
of the Fourth Gospel. It occurred to many writers at about the 
same time. To effect an alliance between Christianity and Alexan- 
drian Platonism was the one passionate enthusiasm midway of the 
second century. Of this enthusiasm, the Fourth Gospel is the grand- 
est monument. The opening verses might have been written by 
Philo-Judaeus, — " In the beginning was the Word, . . . and the life was 
the light of men." But Philo never could have written, " And the 
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us," etc. To Philo, this 
incarnation of the Logos in a human personality would have seemed 
a blasphemous proceeding ; and, even in John, the union of the Logos 
with the human personality of Jesus is purely verbal. ..." He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father." . . . "As the Father hath life in 
himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." — J. W. 
Chadwick [The Man Jesus, p. 240). 



Chapter V. 



X A R R A T 



What is the Order of the Prin ipa ' in the 

Fou 

Tins it Is impossible to determine. 
indefatigable harm Method 

intended to observe the cbronol it the \ 

\ do no! : :iy.* I a t : 

themselves in the too well in time 

am I 

lently to th j, to all i 

sup 

any such d 

r, if trut -me mingled in 

the verbal traditionary reports, th( and 

John, would have kno in a fre^h nar 

tinguish be 
which they ha I t 

concedes that u the tour G 1 written down a 1- 

time after the occurreo 

Another writer thinks we i an on! "the tri 

diflon," — the element in common of tie 
where the text indicates that the 

Jesus. For instance, had they known that Jesus had c 
manded them I iple all nat 

pute as to the admission of the Gentiles to the Church would 
never have arisen.}: 

In the Matthew report oi the Sermon on the I Mr. 

Chadwick and others perceive th.it we hive fragment i 
great many different discourses arbitrarily joined together. 
" Some famous hillside talk mcleus around 



t /<£•;>:, articL vi Jesus, 



NARRATION 39 

various sentences spoken by Jesus at other times gradually 
clustered. In Mark and Luke, the sentences which are here 
joined together into a tolerably consistent whole are assigned 
to various occasions. But there is internal evidence not only 
of spontaneous growth, but of conscious manipulation/' Sev- 
eral of the joints are easily apparent. In Matthew x., the 
instructions to the disciples savor strongly of a later time. 
" Actual experience of persecution is here reflected back upon 
the rime of thought of Jesus." Chapter xiii. "groups into 
arbitrary unity a number of striking parables, which certainly,, 
when originally spoken, did not come galloping upon each 
other's heels in any such fashion. Equally arbitrary is the 
grouping of events in chapters xiv. and xvii. And yet a cer- 
tain progress is discernib e. The period of conflict becomes 
more clearly marked, and it hardly needs a prophet to foretelL 
the ultimate catastrophe."* 

As to time for the incidents, etc., the same writer elsewhere 
deems " the one year of the Synoptists fully adequate to all 
the conditions of the problem, while the three years of John 
land us amid a host of incongruities. The Jesus of John is 
always appearing and vanishing and flitting back and forth 
between Jerusalem and Galilee in a vague and purposeless 
manner, entirely suitab-e to the Logos phantom of this Gospel, 
but entirely at variance with the human personality of Jesus. "f 

Edmund H. Sears thinks Christ made five visits to 
Jerusalem.^ 

In harmonizing the records and determining the preponderant 
portions, it will be found useful to consider the six rules laid down 
by Dr. Simon Greenleaf in bis Testimony of the Evangelists examined 
by the Rules of Evidence administered in Courts of Justice , pp. 7-28. 

* The Bible of To-day, p. 268. 

t The Ma?ijes7is, p. 116. 

t The Fourth Gospel the Heart of Christy p. 370. 



Chapter VI, 



AC* 



What Two Vu 
ing Jesus from the Ordinary 
hen 
ental I 

:ve: that either the oral sta* and 

written re» special providence 

from p 

I there « 
DO opportunity form:- and hence the 

four i ite bistor 

not appear to be 
evidence that, duri 

and the re life 

entirely and his to 

amplifv the pit! re- 

served. The main an<! fundament 

however d in the stream of tim unper- 

verted ai 

the hoi from 

belli 
dropping in idea! truth. 

rattire, tli - and litui churches, are of con 

>wth, — i \ered through- a. 

lea v in- the v 

•mmuni. 
Cremona : it 

years, until every word and public and tunabk 

whatevei an r it by t 1 

is likely to undo. \\ 

elations of Christianity, the 

parallelisms from tl 

when Confucius and the Indian script c made . no 



ACCRETION 4 1 

claim to monopoly of ethical wisdom could be thought of ; and the 
surprising results 'of the new researches into the history of Eejypt 
have opened to us the deep debt of the churches of Rome and Eng- 
land to the Egyptian hierology. — Ralph W. Emerson {Letters and 
Social Aims, p. 147). 

And here may properly be considered the utility of the sim- 
iles, parables, etc. Without either affirming or denying the cor- 
rectness of any of the views of the Tubingen school as to 
myths, the words of a reviewer of Dr. D. F. Strauss' last pub- 
lication may not prove entirely unenlightening in the premises : 

The use of allegory as an educational agent is so familiar that, in 
examining the structure of a matured mythology, especially that 
which has gathered round a creed, we may assume a large portion 
to be made up of distorted symbolism. How the premeditated 
emblems of poet-priests became misconceived by their disciples may 
be illustrated by the kindred instance of idolatry, which is nothing 
but an ignorant worship of the sign for the thing signified. It is 
often, however, a matter of no little difficulty to ascertain, under the 
corrupted mask of age, whether the features of a legend be truly 
allegorical or not. The criterion must be mainly negative. Where 
an elaborate basis of knowledge supports the imaginative structure, 
the mythist may be reasonably credited with design rather than delu- 
sion. The application of this theory is indefinitely extensive and 
fatally provocative of unintentional mythology on the part of those 
who employ it. — Anonymous Reviewer {Home Journal). 

It has been well observed that fron end to end the Bible 
supposes and states that the Idea creates the Fact, that Spirit 
rules Matter, that the Word makes and controls the Thing. God 
spoke by Moses' lips, or ruled by Joshua's leadership. "This 
statement of what is the real substance, namely, the soul or 
life, with the corresponding statement that things, bodily and 
visible, are but transitory forms, gives dignity and character 
to what would else be petty in these histories. True, you can 
find the same lesson in all history; but you do not find it 
everywhere written in this Eastern naivete or simplicity. This 
is, indeed, the distinction of Eastern thought, habit, and 
expression. Those Eastern nations were never startled by the 
idea of spiritual power, unseen, incalculable, but always pres- 
ent. ... It is the story of the Master's life, it is his stories of 
the good Samaritan, of the Prodigal Son, and the rest, which 
have taught men what life is, what divine life is, and have made 
them seek to be sons of God. Paul's letters have helped them, 
when they came to the detail of character. His epigrams have 
been texts for action a id memory. But it is not a letter of 



42 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Paul that sends John Augustus into the prison : it is that he 
follows his Leader. It is no discussion in the Epistle to the 
Romans which turns round tearful and repentant woman with 
the struggling hope of a new life, to leave a house if shame : 
it is the story of Mary Magdalene." Thus remarks Dr. Hale, 
adverting to an actual result wrought by Sarah D. Greenough's 
poem, "Mary Magdalene."' And he adds that Bibles are not 
made by forethought or to order : — 

This book made itself. Gospels there were, which are lost, alas! 
These four were so divine that men wou d not let them die. Hun- 
dreds of letters Paul wrote, and James, the secretary at head- 
quarters. These letters here had ra them that which men must 
have. The law of selection worked, and they kept these in being. 
Nay, you know yourselves how some parts of the Bible are strange to 
you, because they do you no good, while what )ou need is a household 
word and a blessed memory. It is by such compulsion, which no 
scholarship can overthrow or undermine, that a book like the bible 
makes its own way into the affections of the world. And, whenever 
the world adds to its canon new treasures of wisdom or of pagina- 
tion, it will repeat its old history. It will read not the digest of 
a law-book, not the abstractions of a philosopher, but the intense 
visions of a poet, or the tale throbbing with pathos, which m 
ble the struggles of a life. 

I have chosen to say this to-day, because, in a few weeks now, the 
new version of the New Testament will be awaking a new external 
interest in the shape of the Gospels and Epistles, the Book of Acts 
and the Revelation. Happily, we shall not handle the book as an 
idol. Happily, we shall come to it for fruit, for medicine, as we need 
fruit or medicine; and, where we find neither, we shall not force the 
words for what they do not give. In the common-sense notion of the 
Bible to which the youngest child in this church is trained, it has a 
power far surpassing what it had in any of the days of superstition. 
That power is the power which, narrative, dramatic, it histori 
when it is the story of God with man, man with God, man's life hid 
in God, — commands of its very nature. Men must remember; and, 
if they remember, one day they will comply. 

"Theref re speak I to them in parables, that hearing they may 
hear, even if they do not yet understand; and seeing they ma) 
even if they do not vet perceive." "Happy are your eyes, for they 
do see; and your ears, for they do hear " 

What kings and prophets waited for, 
And died without the s:„ 

Dr. Edm 
{Parable and Bible: Sermv: 

Dr. Newman Smyth, however. ins ; sts that there was a fore- 
thought, an u ante-historic power in Israel and the Bible," some 



ACCRETION 43 

inner principle of development of religious life and truth, 
struggling against the outward historical environment, "while 
other people, though taught by many wise men and seers, and 
not without their truths, still can snow no one connected and 
progressive revelation like this"; and he notes two special 
characteristics of such educational plan : — 

There is a plain progress of doctrine in the Bible from without 
inward, from external restraints to inward principles, from law to 
love. The object lesson is given first, the truth of the spirit after- 
ward. The discipline of conduct precedes the renewal of the heart. 
The sign and symbol prepare for the essential and the real. God's 
method in the Bible is like the mother's method with her child. The 
best truths of the home are the last learned. . . . The educational 
progress oi pedagogical intent of the Bible may also be characterized 
as an advance from the general to the specific, from the indefinite to 
the more definite. . . . This may easilv be traced in the succession of 
the names of God which occur in the Old Testament, . . . further bv 
certain results, — . . . the worth of the family, . . . the abolition of 
human dRcrifice and the abolition of slavery, . . . personal immor- 
tality. . . . The Bible is its own commentary and corrective. When 
that which is perfect is come, that which is in part of itself falls away 
from the divine law. — Old Faiths in Xew Light, p. 82, ff. 

And still the world is " adding to its canon new treasures of 
wisdom or of imagination.'' 

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, 

And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone ; 

Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, 

Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. 

While swings the sea, while mists the mountain shroud, 

While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud, 

Still at the prophet's feet the nations sit. 

— James R. Lowell. 

And this, too, the wisdom of the heart rather than of the 
head alone : — 

Not from a vain or shallow thought 

His awful Jove young Phidias brought, 

Never from lips of cunning fell ■ 

The thrilling Delphic oracle ; 

Out from the heart of nature rolled 

The burdens of the Bible old ; 

The litanies of nations came, 

Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 

Up from the burning core below, — 

The canticles of love and woe ; 

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, 

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 

Wrought in a sad sincerity : 

Himself from God he could not free ; 

He builded better than he knew ; — 

The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson {The Problem, — Poems, p. 14). 



Chapter VII. 



GEN ER ATI ON S. 



What Two Differe?it Views of the Genealogical Records of 

Jesii 

One affirming, and one denying the historical reliability of 
the accounts thereof in the First and Third Gospels. Accord- 
ing to the latter view, the division in Matthew into three s 
of fourteen generatioi ed number seven, 

savors of artifice. Luke has eleven tim n generations. 

The first list, mounting up to Abraham and representing Jesus 
distinctly as Israel's Messiah, is thought to have originated in 
Jewish Christian circles. The other, going up to u Adam, the 
son of God," and attaching Jesus to the whole human ra 
would seem to have been revised in a Gentile Christian spirit. 
It is now generally conceded by students on either side that 
the ancestral names in the two accounts are irreconcilable.* 
From the circumstance that Jesus wore a seamless coat, Dr. 
Ewald argues that Mary was of the priestly tribe. St. John, her 
nephew, was known to the high priest, en 

It has been remarked that the effort to trace the line of Jesus 
to David is characteristic of the deference which writers in all 
monarchical countries pay to "blood"; that, before the oral 
traditions had crystallized into biography, the recorded yearn- 
ings for a coming prince would naturally give shape to a popu- 
lar belief that one who so well filled the ideal for tl iah 
must certainly have descended from that royal soul, David; 
that little can be inferred from the meagrely reported d 
claimer: " If David then called him Lord, how is he his son 

From the whole record, it wouli seem that one inferen 
unavoidable; namely, that the genealogical writers themsel 
entertained no doubt that Joseph was the father of Jesus. 

* See Schleiermacher's Essay . p. 4 s ;. Harper's Cyclopedia 

of B: 

t Ewald's Life of Jesus Christ (Glover's translation), pj 



GENERATIONS 45 

Otherwise, the descent of Joseph would not have been in the 
least to the point. 

There may be some grounds for supposing that Joseph and 
Mary were not in poor circumstances.* 

But it will not be denied that tacts in the after-life of Jesus are 
symbolized in the accessories — whether legendary or historical 
— of the nativity alleged. He is cradled in a manger : he will 
never find so much as a place to lay his head, until, persecuted 
on every side, he drops it weary and thorn-pierced on the cross. 
The event that earth passes by unnoticed is celebrated with in- 
tensest joy and brightest radiance in heaven. The tidings are 
brought to humble shepherds : it will be the ambition of Jesus 
to befriend the poor and simple. 

It may here be remarked that, independently of either the 
canonical or uncanonical Gospels, Christ stands an historical 
person. The testimony therefor is (i) that of Paul; (2) that 
of Josephus, who in his Antiquities \ speaks of James as 
the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ ; and (3) Tacitus, 
who in his Annals % mentions Christus, who in the reign of 
Tiberius was put to death as a criminal by the procurator, 
Pontius Pilate. Some, however, have considered the two 
latter to be interpolations. But, considering the whole con- 
text of Tacitus, while it is improbable (but not impossible) 
that so candid and philosophical an observer, narrating as 
early as in the first century, would, in adverting to Nero's 
accusing the Christians of setting fire to Rome, accept the 
current slanders of popular heathen prejudice against the char- 
acter of the Christians, it seems more improbable that any 
" monk on pious fraud intent " would so overdo the job as to 
write down Christianity a " baneful superstition." 

*See Mr. Conway's Idols and I deals y App. Essay, p. 17. 
t Book xx., chap. 9. 
X Book xv., chap. 44. 



Chapter VI II, 



ANNUNCIATION. 



What Two Views concerning the Annunciation to Mary, the 
Star-heralding, and the A ngel-chorus t 

(i) That these were veritable historical and supernatural 
occurrences. 

(2) That they are the poetic legendary outgrowth of the 
loving imagination of the friends and followers of Jesus, when 
he became famous. The adherents of this view have argued 
that no prediction that Mary would bear a son who would sit 
on "the throne of his father David," as a temporal ruler, has 
ever been fulfilled; that Mary's song* is a reproduction of 
Hannah's;! that Gabriel — from the ranks J "that stand in 
the presence of God," § arranged like the royal court of an 
Oriental monarch, and whom the tongue of Zacharias or of any 
other mortal must, on peril of being struck dumb, beware of 
interrupting with bothersome requests for proofs — is bor- 
rowed from some apocryphal writer || (so, also, as to the 
"Gabriel" that came to Mary,1T and the angel in Joseph's first 
dream**); that Mary, if unequivocally told by an angel from 
heaven that her son was going to be a leader worthy of follow- 
ing, would not be very like most mothers, if she did not 
"ponder" the message to sufficient purpose thenceforth in- 
variably to heed it, — to recognize the lofty significance of his 
personality instead of afterward aiding and abetting his un- 
believing and protesting brothers ; that, if she made the 
journey to the hills of Judea and had an interview with her 
aged cousin Elizabeth under such circumstances as Luke 
mentions, the relations of the two and of their two sons would 
have been such that Jesus would not have been received by 

* Luke i., 46-55. 1 1. Sam. ii., 1-10. 

$ Perhaps of the supposed seven chiefs, Michael, Raphael, Uriel, etc 

§ Luke i., 19. Daniel ix., 21 ; x., 15. 



IILukei.,26. **Matt 



2-\. 



ANNUNCIATION 47 

John at Jordan as a stranger; that perhaps the "star" got into 
an Ebionite document in the hands of the Matthew evangelist 
from the words in the Balaam legend, — "a star that rises out of 
Jacob " ; that, had the moving star and the shining choir been 
literal entities when the Messianic expectation was at a fever- 
ish height, the news would have spread like fire, and history 
would never have shown the general public to have been 
ignorant of such remarkab'e phenomena; * that such prodigies 
had in centuries of Oriental tradition been associated with the 
birth of many a greatly adored personage (as, for instance, the 
star of ^Eneas and the thirty-two signs of the conception of the 
Buddha); that not merely in the case of Moses, Romulus, and 
Cyrus, had impending danger been one of the afterthought 
properties in the stage-setting of an infant whose future life- 
drama had proved sensational ; that the fact that Luke, Jo- 
sephus, and other historians ignore the Matthew episode of 
the slaughter of the innocents (which, if occurring, could not 
escape being a horridly renowned political event) confirms the 
suspicion of artifice in the Ebionite's redactor, eager to fetch in 
some application f of Jeremiah's Rachel refraining from weep- 
ing for children that should "come again from the land of 
the enemy"; % that it is strange the star left the "wise" men 
in uncertainty at Jerusalem, inquiring whereabouts, etc. ; that it 
is absurd that the crafty Herod, if afraid the Magi would not 
return, aroused their suspicions by a secret summons, and sent 
no scout to observe them, or that in so small a place as 
Bethlehem he could not easily have discovered the particular 
house and child that had been honored by so distinguished a 
visit, and thus avoided a senseless wholesale massacre, or that 
so notorious a crime would have escaped the pen of Josephus, 
who gives a minute account of the atrocities perpetrated up to 
the very last moment of Herod's life ; in fine, that the details 
of the Matthew narrative in this regard show the narrator to 
be too intensely Jewish partisan to be safely credited thereon 
without corroboration. Concerning the possibility of making 
the Luke framework fit the Matthew incidents of the nativity, 
or conversely, there has been much discussion. § 

Did Mary so ponder as immovably to believe that the Messiah 
should see the light of life through her ? The Gospels leave us too 

*As to the stars, arising from a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, 747 U.C., 
see Glover's note in Ewaid's Life of Jesus Christ, p. 350. 

t Matt, ii., 17. % Jer. xxxi., 15, 16. 

§ See Harper's Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Liter- 
ature. 



4'S RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

clearly to think the opposite. There was a time long after this, when 
Christ was already a teacher, when she wavered between him and his 
brethren, who did not believe in him; when she went out with them 
to draw him away from his course, and bring him back to her nar- 
rower circle of home life, as one who was hardly in his right mind. 
Firm, unwavering trust, that knows no passing cloud, is a work of 
time with all who have an inner personal nearness to the Saviour; 
and it was so with Mary. She reached it only, like us all, through 
manifold doubts and struggles of heart, by that grace from above 
which roused her, ever anew, and led her on from step to step. — Dr. 
Ciumingham Geikie [Life and Words of Christy chap. ix.). 

The angel's salutation is given by Luke in almost the very 
words of the seer Tiresias to the mother of Hercules : " Be of 
good cheer, thou mother of a noble offspring. Blessed art 
thou among Argive women ! M 

What are the miracles of law's imagined violation to the miracles 
of inviolate law ? The miraculous birth of Jesus ! As if every birth 
into this world were not a wonder past enough to stir 

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

His immaculate conception ! Thank God, that century-living slur 
upon the purity of all the mothers in the world but one is hastening 
to its doom! — John White Chadwick {The Man Jesus, p. 42). 



Chapter IX. 



LOCATION. 



What Diverse Views of the Date and Place of the Birth of 

yesus t 

The date was in A.D. 525, arbitrarily set at the year of 
Rome 753. But Herod the Great had died early in 750 U.C. 
Perhaps most Biblical students now place the birth in the 
spring of 4 B.C.* The putting of the day at December 25 was 
perhaps an adaptation to the Roman festival of "the Uncon- 
querable Sun," just after the winter solstice. The same day 
had been similarly observed among the Greeks, Persians, and 
Egyptians ; and pre-eminently so might be the rise of " the 
light of the world" on the long night of sin, the warmth and 
life of good-will shed into hearts of men the world around. 

As to the place of the birth, two theories have been adduced : 
(1) Bethlehem; (2) Nazareth. The latter theorists urge that 
the words of Jesus himself indicate that he was a native of 
Nazareth ; that local names were given to men from the place 
of their birth, but their residence was changeable : that the 
presumability of the alleged journey to Jerusalem depends 
chiefly on the probability of the alleged occasion therefor, and, 
had there been a simultaneous coming up of everybody in the 
land, — a census of Syria, as parenthetically averred by Luke, 
or of the whole Roman world, — it would have been mentioned 
in profane history, whereas, although Publius Sulpicius Ouir- 
inus (Cyrenius), pro-consul, when governor of Syria, made a 
registration in Judea and Samaria when they became a Roman 
province, this was not until nearly ten years after the death of 
Herod the Great, and did not extend to Galilee nor concern 
Joseph's family :f that, at the probable time of the birth, the 

* In Harper's Cyclopedia of Biblical, Tlieological, and Ecclesiastical Litera- 
ture, and in Canon F. W. Farrar's Life of Christ (App. of the Cassel ed.), the con- 
flicting theories are fully considered. 

t See Dr. Davidson's Introdziction, ii., p. 68. 



SO RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

governor of Syria was not Cyrenius, but Saturninus ; that 
Mark and John, while not directly mentioning the place of 
the birth, confirm the primitive tradition of early residence at 
Nazareth ; that Matthew virtually confesses that, to make out 
his case that Jesus is the Messiah, he adapts his location to 
Micah v., 2, — out of Bethlehem Ephratah shall come a ruler, 
etc. ; that this suspicious bias is also disclosed in Matthew's 
misapplication of Hosea xi., 1, " When Israel was a child, 
then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt " ; and that 
there are some discrepancies in Matthew's minor details, — 
" the revolving-light behavior of the* star at Jerusalem,'' etc. 

The Gospel of the Infancy * says Jesus was born on the road 
before his parents reached Bethlehem, — according to the Pro- 
tevangelion, three miles distant, — and adds that, when he was 
born, "wise men came from the East to Jerusalem, as Zoro- 
dascht f ( Zoroaster), had predicted ; and there were with them 
gifts," etc. The account adds that Mary gave them a swad- 
dling cloth instead of a blessing, and on their return they cast 
it into a fire, and it remained unharmed : also that they were 
guided by an angel in the form of a star. Another account 
stated that Jesus was born in a cave. X 

* See ante, chap. ii. 

t In the ante-Nicene copy, " Zeruduscht." See (in Du Perron's translation of 
the Zend-Avesta) the Life of Zoroaster, vol. i., Part II., p. 45. 
% See Judge Wake's History ', etc., to the year 200, passim. 



Chapter X. ■ 

CONCEPTION 

What Three Views concerning the Paternity of Jesus ? 

(i) That he was super naturally " conceived by the Holy 
Ghost," and had no natural human father. 

(2) That all the natural conditions necessary to an ordinary 
human birth were present, but to these there was added "an 
absolutely creative act which did away with the traducian sinful 
influence." * 

(3) That Joseph was the father, in the most natural sense ; 
that before the conception he had been lawfully married to 
Mary. For this view, some have argued that the thesis induc- 
ing the attempt of the Ebionite redactor f to adapt the pater- 
nity to a record of words addressed to Ahaz % is absurd, and 
contrary to the preponderance of evidential data of the four 
canonical Gospels. It has also been argued that the Hebrew 
word for " spirit," being of the feminine gender, the saying 
that the Holy Spirit was the father of Jesus must have arisen 
among the Greeks, and not among the first believers, who were 
Jews ; that, even if the story did not so arise, it would be very 
natural for the figurative tendency of Oriental expression to 
have so pure a character as Jesus created of a holy spirit, and 
for tradition, along down the years following the crucifixion, to 
enhance this appropriate simile to the present metaphor or 
hyperbole. § 

* Schleiermacher. 

t Matt. i. r 22, 23. 

%A Virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. 
Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the 
good, for before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the 
land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings. ... A man shall nour- 
ish a young cow and two sheep. . . . For the abundance of milk that they shall give, 
he shall eat butter." — Isaiah vii., 14, 22. 

§ For a rather incisive review of the patristic ideas of the paternity, see Mr. 
Savage's Talks about Jesus, pp. 57-59. 



52 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

It is also argued that the thesis of the author (or of the 
redactor) of the Fourth Gospel is unquestionably Gnostic ; * 
that, from the doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato, — that all 
natures, intelligible, intellectual, and material, are derived by 
successive emanations (aeones) from the infinite fountain of 
Deity, — the transition was easy, by a little revision of the tra- 
ditions of the Jewish Christians, to that of the Neo-platonic 
Christians, concerning the pre-existence of the soul of Jesus: 
" The Word was made flesh."' f 

In support of this view, it is asserted that the New Testa- 
ment, and especially the Fourth Gospel, is covered with finger- 
marks of the Gnostic belief, — namely, that the original and 
supreme God dwelt apart and afar from the operations of the 
material universe, and had nothing whatever to do with matter; 
and the world was created by a sub-deity, Demiurgus : and that 
a corresponding allowance must be made for the stand-point 
of a writer saying Christ created the world. Pope's lines have 
pretty general indorsement : — 

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul ; 
Who changed in all, and yet in all the same, 
Great in the earth as in the starry frame ; 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; 
Lives through .ill life, extends through all extent ; 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent, — 
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small, 
He fills, He bounds, connects and blesses all. 

In this connection, after adverting to the Trinitarian view 
and certain technical distinctions essential thereto, Dr. J. F. 
Clarke says : — 

We find more of God in Christ, not less, because we do not em- 
barrass ourselves by these technical and theological distinctions, but 
accept him as he appears everywhere to be, a simple man; a man 
who, by the divine gift and help and inspiration, was able to rise till 
he came so near to God that, when we see him, we catch something of 
the reflected light of the Deity shining in his face. An old E: 
religious poet has said : — 

A man who looks on glass, 

On it may stay his eye, 
Or if he pleases through it pass, 

And then the heavens espy. 

*See Dr. M. Arnold's G chap, v., "The Fourth Gospel from 

Within." 

tjohn i., 14; after a personification of the idea in Prow viii., 22-30, — "The 
Lord possessed me in the beginning," etc. ; also Wisdom vii., 2: 



CONCEPTION 53 

Christ as a man is the glass. If we please, we can look on the 
glass, stay our eyes on that. Then, we see his human character. Or 
we can look through the glass, and see that he is a mediator of God 
who shines through his mind and heart, and so fills us with a sense of 
the great Deity. — Discourse 071 Acts xxiv., 14, American Unitarian 
Association Tracts, Series 4, No. 28, 1878.* 

Egyptian paganism still insisted on three gods; philosophy de- 
manded unity : the compromise was a triune godhead. — M. D. Con- 
way {Idols and Ideals, App. Essay, p. 54). 

According to the three synoptics, Jesus made no allusion to any 
miraculous circumstances connected with his birth. He looked 
upon himself as belonging to Nazareth, not as the child of Bethle- 
hem; he reproved the scribes for teaching that the Messiah must 
necessarily be a descendant of David, and did not himself make any 
express claim to such descent. — Albert Reville {History of the Doc- 
trine of the Deity of Christ). 

Arius, of Alexandria, excommunicated by Bishop Alexander, 
but recalled by Constantine, taught that the Son was created 
out of nothing by the will of the Father, and hence was in- 
ferior to the Father in nature and dignity; and that the Holy 
Spirit is created by the power of Christ. Sabellius, of Libya, 
in the third century taught that the Son and Holy Spirit are 
only different powers, operations, or offices of the Father. 
Socinus of Sienna, in the sixteenth century, taught that Christ 
was an inspired man. 

The animating motive of Arius was apparently to steer the ship 
of dogma clear of the rock of ditheism, the notion of two Gods. 
Two beings, one unbegotten, the other eternally begotten, seemed 
to him no better than two Gods. As for himself, he would not 
say that " there was a time when Christ was not," but " there was 
when Christ was not." He was before time, but God was before him. 
How clear this is; how palpable; how wholesome ; how nutritious ! 
Then, too, Arius stuck at the word "begotten." If Christ was be- 
gotten, then, as begotten from the unbeeotten, he must inherit the 
unbegottenness of his begetter ! — John White Chadwick. 

Joseph Cook, in his Boston lecture of March 26, 1877, ad- 
duced four theses : (a) The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are 
one God; (b) Each has a peculiarity incommunicable to the 
others; (c) Neither is God without the others; (*/) Each with 

*See also discussions between Messrs. Clarke and Joseph Cook on the "Tri- 
unity," the " At-one-ment," etc., 1877. Also a pamphlet, The Doctrine of the 
Trinity defended -z^ainst the Attacks of "/. F. C, by John H. Eager, B.D. 
Also Channing's Works > vol. iii., p. 70. Also Swedenborg's Brief Exposition, 
n. 35- 



54 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

the others is God. He would not say that there are lit- 
erally three wills, three sets of affections, three intellects. 
Whereupon "E.A. H.," in the Inquirer of April 12, 1877, 
commented : — 

Here is the old, futile attempt renewed to make the sent equal with 
the sender; that which proceeds equal with the source. Compare 
this trinity with George W. F. Hegel's. The divine nature (or idea) 
unfolds itself in three forms: (1) Being eternally, in and with itself, 
the kingdom of the Father; (2) The form of manifestation in phys- 
ical nature and in the finite spirit, the kingdom of the Son; (3) The 
Deity in the sphere of the religious community, the kingdom of the 
spirit. In such a definition there are no quibbles, no self-contradic- 
tions. It is philosophic : we recognize lucidity and mental integrity 
in the premises, though our acceptance may not be given any more to 
Hegel's trinity than to Mr. Cook's. 

"It is not a definition that I wish to give, but a life," says the 
lecturer. Which expression, when probed, means this : I wish to 
make evident that Christ must be worshipped as God, or else our 
way is dark. It is the same ground Mr. LJeecher has long taken. 
He says : I cannot know God as he is, but Christ has been revealed 
that I may have something personal to worship. He is God in that 
sense, our best idea of Deity; an object for finite grasp to seize. 
The Unitarian finds no such necessity in his nature: he desires to 
worship the one living God, and finds it possible. His Scriptures do 
not direct him to address prayers to Jesus; his idea of the "nature 
of things" conflicts with any such assignment of rank to him. As a 
Way, as a Life, as a Guide, he leads to the Father. The Son is but 
the servant of the Most High, whose will he came to do. 

Another modified form of the creed was recently criticised : — 

Dr. Smyth believes " in one God, existing in three eternal distinc- 
tions of being, of absolute moral perfection." God then exists as 
three eternal beings who are eternally distinct, which is an unthinka- 
ble absurdity. There is not room in the universe for three eternals. 
— James K. Applebee {The Commonwealth, Oct. 14, 1SS2). 

In the theological controversy at the council of Nicaea, A. p. 
the only argument recorded is that of Nicholas of Myra, which was 
literally " a knock-down argument " ; for he gave Arius of Alexandria 
such a blow in the jaw that this offending member must have been 
incapacitated for its legitimate functions for a time. His creed, how- 
ever, was produced and read to the assembly. A storm of disappro- 
bation greeted it, and it was torn in fragments by the opposing party. 
Another creed, that of Eusebius of Caesarea, was read, disapproved, 
and torn in pieces. To read this creed, though Eusebius was himself 
an Arian, any one would suppose that it might give satisfaction to 
the most orthodox. It had given satisfaction to the emperor 
stantine, who, before the meeting of the council, had leaned undis- 



CONCEPTION 55 

guisedly to the Arian side; but the very fact that this creed was 
satisfactory to the Arians insured its condemnation by the opposite 
party. What this party wanted was a creed that Arius could not 
accept; and it was furnished them, or, at least, its crucial word, by 
one of the Arian party, Eusebius of Nicomedia, who declared that 
"to assert the Son to' be uncreated would be to say that he was 
homoousian, — that is, of one substance with the Father." Great was the 
excitement caused by this letter. It was torn in pieces, as the obnox- 
ious creeds had been before it; and then a creed was fashioned by 
the Athanasian party, in which the word "homoousian" was embod- 
ied. So hateful to the Arians, it was just the word the Athanasians 
wanted. The creed, so far as it concerned the nature of Christ, 
affirmed belief in " one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten 
of the Father ; only begotten, that is to say, of the substance of the 
Father ; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begot- 
ten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all 
things were made," etc. 

At once, the emperor threw himself with his whole weight on the 
side of this statement. What he wanted was unanimity, and he cared 
little how it was gained. To Eusebius, he privately confessed that he 
understood homoousian to mean homoiousian, "of the same sub- 
stance" to mean "of like substance," and advised Eusebius to sign, 
with this private understanding! All of the Arian bishops, except 
some five or six, proved their subserviency and duplicity by following 
his example. Constantine, determined to do nothing by halves, 
issued a decree of banishment against all who refused to sign the 
creed, denounced Arius and his disciples as impious, and ordered 
that he and his disciples should be called Porphyrians, and his books 
burned, under penalty of death to any one who perused them. — J. IV. 
Chadwick {The Man Jesus •, p. 252). 

Some* of the principal "technical and theological distinc- 
tions " to which Dr. Clarke above referred are thus presented 
by Bishop Hans Lassen Martensen : — 

When we say that God knows himself as a Father, we say that he 
knows himself as the ground of the heavenly universe which proceeds 
eternally forth from him, solely because he knows himself as the 
ground of his own outgoing into this universe, in which he hyposta- 
tizes himself as Logos. When we say that God knows himself as 
Son, we say, God knows himself as the one who from eternity pro- 
ceeded forth from his own fatherly ground, he knows himself as the 
deuteros theos, who objectively reveals the fulness wrapped up in the 
Father. Without the Son, the Father could not say to himself I ; 
for the form of the Ego, without an objective something different 
from the Ego (a non-Ego, a Thou) in relation to which it can grasp 
itself as Ego, is inconceivable. What the outward world, what 
nature, what other persons are for us, to wit, the condition of our 
own self-consciousness, the Son and the objective world which arises 



56 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

before the Father in and through (dia) the Son are for the Father, — 
to wit, the condition of his own identity. 

But, if the inner revelation were terminated in the Son, God would 
be manifest to himself merely according to the necessity of his 
nature and thought, not according to the freedom of his will. It 
would be merely in intellectual contemplation that God would stand 
related to the heavenly world, which, by a necessity of nature, pro- 
ceeds forth from him in the birth of the Son; but he would not stand 
to it in the relation of a free formative cause. It is only because the 
relation of God to his world is that of a freely working, moulding, 
creating agent, as well as that of a natural logical necessity, that he 
constitutes himself its Lord. If, then, the "birth" of the Son out of 
the essence of the Father denotes the momentum of necessity, the 
" procession " of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son de- 
notes the momentum of freedom in the inner revelation. The 
Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, as the third hyposta 
whose work it is to transform and glorify the necessary subject of 
thought into the free act of the will, and to "mould the eternal king- 
dom of ideas into a kingdom of inner creations of free conceptions. 
The fatherly pleroma which is revealed in the Son as a kingdom of 
ideas, of a necessity proceeding out of the depths of his being, is 
glorified by the free art*>tic action of the Spirit into an inner king- 
dom of glory (doxa), in which the eternal possibilities are present 
before the face of God as magical realities, as a heavenly host of 
visions, of plastic architypes, for a revelation i .-, to which they 

desire, as it were, to be sent forth. Only on the basis of such a free 
procession of the Spirit, which is at the same time a free retroces- 
sion, can the relation between the Father and the Son be one of 1 
In the Spirit alone is the relation of God to himself and his inner 
world, not merely a metaphysical relation, a relation of natural neces- 
sity, but a free, an ethical relation. But, notwithstanding that the 
Spirit is a distinct hypostasis, perfecting, completing momentum in 
the Godhead, the entire Trinitv must also be designated Spirit. 
"God is a Spirit," says Christ; and this is the comprehensive desig- 
nation of the Trinitarian God. 

There are, therefore, three eternal acts of consciousness ; and the 
entire divine Ego is in each of these three acts. Each hvpostasis has 
being slely through the other two. Here there is no temporal first or 
last. The entire Trinity stands in one present Now, three eter 
flames in the one light. — Christian I 
lotion),* 

Many, however, who are apprehensive of " wading in pursuit 
of abstractions too far out from ter oncretions for 

*But see Dr. Matthew Am . ''The God of 

Metaphysics." Also L 
B. F. Ba 
tJie Di 



CONCEPTION 57 

logical safety," fain content themselves with the reflection of 
H. B. Thoreau : — 

I had but few companions on the shore ; 
They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea ; 
Yet oft I think the ocean they've sailed o'er 
Is deeper known upon the strand to me. 

The middle sea contains no crimson dulse, 
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view ; 
Along the shore my hand is on its pulse, 
And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew. 

All of which suggests the utterance of Thoreau's friend, who 
also would " see the natural before the supernatural " : — 

Above all men do I bow myself before that august personage, 
Jesus of Nazareth, who seems to have had the strength of man and the 
softness of woman, — man's mighty, wide, grasping, reasoning, calcu- 
lating, and poetic mind; and woman's conscience, woman's hart, and 
woman's faith in God. He is my best historic ideal of human great- 
ness; not without errors nor. . . . — Theodore Parker. 

And also that of another " Concord philosopher " : — 

Always put the best interpretation on a tenet. Why not on Chris- 
tianity, wholesome, sweet, and poetic ? It is the record of a pure and 
holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a truth-speaker, and bent 
on serving, teaching, and uplifting men. Christianity taught the 
capacity, the element, to love the All-perfect without a stingy bargain 
for personal happiness. It taught that to love him was happiness, — 
to love him in others' virtues. An era in human history is the life of 
Jesus ; and the immense influence for g od ] eaves all the perversion 
and superstition almost harmless. Mankind have been subdued to 
the acceptance of his doctrine, and cannot spare the benefit of so pure 
a servant of truth and love. Of course, a hero so attractive to the 
hearts of millions drew the hypocrite and the ambitious into his train, 
and they used his name to falsify his history and undo his work. — 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, [Unitarian Review January, 1SS0). 

After all such conflict of opinion, how sweetly soothing are 
Emerson's wise words ! Not always is the yearning vain : — 

How might her reconciling notes 

Have symphonized earth's din, 
And turned life 's_ outward dissonance 

To harmony within. 

Luella Clark. 



Chapter XI. 



DEIFICATION. 



What Threefold Classification of MeiCs Views of God and the 
Expressioii offesus, "Our Father t 

(i) The anthropomorphic, or extreme personal ; (2) the atheis- 
tic, or extreme impersonal ; (3) the empiric or ideal. Dr. Hedge, 
in his chapter on "The Natural History of Theism,"' after 
tracing the idea of God in the way of natural religion through the 
several stages of fetichism,astrolatry, impersonation of physical 
forces, and theanthropism, — God as terrestrial creature, God 
as celestial radiance, God as personified elemental power, 
and God as man, — adds : — 

God reveals himself not by sensible apparition, but by his witness 
in ihe soul. That testimony first heard by elect individuals, — medi- 
tative men, like Abraham, Zoroaster, Moses, Jesus, — and declared by 
them, becomes what we call a 44 revelation." or divine dispensation of 
religion. Monotheism comes not by the way of natural religion, 
seeking God without and fusing its many gods into one, but by re- 
flection, seeking God within; and the difference between natural and 
revealed religion consists in this, that in the former the religious 
sentiment is turned outward, in the latter inward. ... It finds in the 
dictates of the moral sense, in imperative warnings and obligations, in 
the consciousness of spiritual wants and aspirations, a God unknown 
to natural religion, — a God who is not mere power and intelligence 
and commanding will, but goodness holiness, truth, love. These 
constitute the God of moral intuition, — a God self-evident and one in 
the double sense of onliness and unity. The very idea of such a 
God excludes multitude. There can be but one absolute ' G 
Hence, revealed religioi* is necessarilv monotheistic. . . . Inward 
and ever inward is the way to Gocl. — Dr. F. IT. Hedge {Ways of the 
Spirit, p. 140). 

Dr. Matthew Arnold traces the word k< God " back to a root 
signifying " brilliance."' His favorite designation is " the power 
not ourselves that works for righteousness." * M. D. Conway 

*G..- s:'fH. 



DEIFICATION 59 

would call the power " God, as best expressing that sacred 
influence which is the main fact of our inward life." Every 
experience must seek its expression. As a term for the ideal 
elements within and without us which denote their reality, the 
word " God " appears to him the least daring, the least descrip- 
tive, while popularly it suggests the Good. It must become an 
increasingly impersonal expression by the very necessity of 
being detached from the several personified patron deities of 
the various races, "Vishnu," "Jehovah," "Jupiter," "Allah," etc. 

When the great Religion of Man has come, this term will neces- 
sarily stand — as it stands now in the pages of Goethe, Carlyle, 
Emerson, and many poets — for the indefinable but majestic su- 
premacy of perfect and eternal principles ; for their unity, univer- 
sality, and harmony ; for their superlative glory in all things fair and 
grand, and the passionate love and longing they awaken in the breast 
of man. . . . 

It is anthropomorphic to say, " God loves," for to love is the act of 
man : not so to say, " God is Love," for we can have no idea of a man 
who is love. To say, "God knows" is anthropomorphic: not so to 
say, "God is Wisdom." When Jesus said, " God is a Spirit," — in his 
own sense of a viewless influence, whose effect we feel as we do the 
breath of the wind, while w r e cannot tell whence it cometh or whither 
it goeth, — he raised the mind above every anthropomorphic concep- 
tion to the pure elemental realm of ideal and moral existence. . . . 
Nor do I worship the Unknown. What I do worship is my ideal as 
perfect as I can make it. Love, reason, right, beauty, are blended 
and consummate in it. In what mode or modes these subsist in the 
universe none can know, but it is not my ignorance that I worship : 
it is the ideal which I do know, though knowing not the metaphysics 
of it. . . . 

But is all this real ? Is there in the universe any reason apart from 
the brain of man, or any principle of love beyond that manifested in 
the human heart? For myself, I cannot doubt that there are in 
nature these supreme elements which make and mould us rather than 
we them. There is in nature an evolutional order, a geometry, a 
mathematical uniformity, by which are built the worlds and the cells 
of bees, and which make possible the sciences of man. Upon man, 
the universal laws are compulsory. . . . Reason is a principle in nature 
which reaches consciousness in man, but it does not grow into exist- 
ence through man ; for man's growth is an ascension to an inward 
harmony with it, in place of that coercion by it which, in his lower 
condition, he shares with plant and animal. 

Love exists in nature. It is the principle of progress, and to 
believe in progress is to believe in God. Recognizing as highest 
within us the attraction of the best, and individual growth as its 
expression, we look forth upon the world, and discern a like 
law operative there. Life has journeyed from the zoophyte to 
Shakspere. Art has journeyed from a naked savage swimming 



60 RECORDS OF JES I EWED 

across his river on a log to a civilized man crossing the ocean 
in a floating palace; from the scrawled picture letter to the car- 
toon of Raphael. Humanity has journeyed from the normal war 
of nomadic savages to courts of law, arbitration, and social comity. 
Honesty has become the best policy. The peaceful more and more 
inherit the earth: animal and human ferocities p ntleness 

and benefit survive and increase. Evermore a ; ard the 

better 1 Why is this movement not backward? Why has there not 
been a steady survival of the morally unfittest ? W .1 there 

not have gone on a - rowth of the adc, a multiplication 

of slaves, an advance in i able the extent of that serfdom 

which has been abolished? Why lias not dishonesty become the 1 
policy? Why this phenom ird, 

not backward, even the d and par- 

civilization followed invariably by a finer combination, and 
tributing I the general impu 

ae theological tneisl nold's 

reverential I tendency": neverthc 

that ark that Faith is to i 

For tli [\ tendenc .d it mil- 

ling cha 
\e look forth and see the cyclone in In 
its two hundred wn in a 

the r that m 

e probl h a 

reditcd 
We 

natu Franklin fa 

which spiritually 

electric it v. We feel — and why s ht ? 

— that I 

life, are the profound -pond to 

their like reality in the ui 

There is an tnflu aeath wl -.kind must bene'. 

beneath the invisible wind. - ad over. 

lower nature. We cannot, we will not, endure the 
intimati :r immortality n 

the egotism of the vulgai 
While we mUse, the tire burns. 

to ascend with them. From the ved 

a life — how strange, undreamab.e ! — t sal, equally have 

derived ideals and a in thi 

invisible, — in moral beauty, the bar: the 

inward and outer worlds ; and e\ feel the 

warm, quick 

darkness of the earth the heart D 
attraction whose nature it cannot 



DEIFICATION Ol 

promise a far-off flowering into joy. — Moncure D. Conway {Idols 
and Ideals, p. 135, ff.). 

This well-enunciated recognition of the existence yet inde- 
finability of God, especially the reference to Goethe, will recall 
the familiar passage in Fatist : — 

Who dare express Him ? 

And who profess him, 

Saying : I believe in him ! 

Who, feeling, seeing, 

Deny his being, 

Saying : I believe him not ! 

The All-enfolding, 

The All-upholding, 

Folds and upholds he not 

Thee, me, himself? 

Arches not there the sky above us ? 

Lies not beneath us firm the earth ? 

And rise not on us shining 

Friendly the everlasting stars ? 

Look I not eye to eye on thee, 

And feel'st not, thronging 

To head and heart, the force, 

Still weaving its eternal secret, 

Invisible, visiole, round thy life ? 

Vast as it is, fill with that force thy heart, 

And when thou in the feeling wholly blessed art, 

Call it then what thou wilt, — 

Call it Bliss! Heart ! Love ! God ! 

I have no name to give it ! 

Feeling is all in all : 

The name is sound and smoke, , 

Obscuring Heaven's clear glow. 

Goethe {Fattst, J. Bayard Taylor's 
translation, p. 221). 

Also his Proem to " Gott und Welt " : — 

To Him who from eternity, self-stirred, 
Himself hath made by his creative word ; 
To him, supreme, who causeth faith to be, 
Trust, hope, love, power, and endless energy; 
To him, who, seek to name him as we will, 
Unknown, within himself abideth still ! 

Strain eye and ear, till sight of sense be dim, 

Thou'lt find but faint similitudes of him : 

Yea, and thy spirit in her flight of flame 

Still strives to gauge the symbol and the name : 

Charmed and compelled, thou climb'st from height to height, 

And round thy path the world shines wondrous bright, 

Time, space, and size, and distance cease to be, 

And every step is fresh infinity. 

What were the God who sat outside to scan 

The sphere that 'neath his finger circling ran ? 

God dwells within, and moves the world, and moulds, 

Himself and nature in one form enfolds ; 

Thus, ail that lives in him, and breathes, and is, 

Shall ne'er his puissance, ne'er his spirit miss. 



62 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

The soul of man, too, is a universe : 

Whenca follows it that race with race concurs 

In framing all it knows of good and true, 

God, — yea, its own God, — and with homage due : 

Surrenders to his sway both earth and heaven, 

Fears him, and loves where place for love is given. 

Translated by J . A. S., in the Spectator, Sept. 24, 1870. 

And the like thought has lately found other good expression : 

Absolute fulness and perfection of being, including of course and 
especially moral perfection, as the ground of the existence of this 
universe of which we are a part, is a postulate of our whole nature, 
intellectual, moral, emotional, affectional. That or nothing. Imper- 
fection utterly fails of satisfying our thought. And, moreover, as we 
dwell on that thought, it is revealed to our deepest contemplation 
that the absolute perfection of being is love. Love, free from every 
element of human weakness, — wise, holy, righteous, ever expressing 
itself in the promotion of the highest good that spiritual beings can 
receive, that is, moral good, ever strictly holding all moral beings to 
that highest end of their existence, and never withholding from them 
any discipline necessary to lead them into it, — such love, inhabiting 
eternity and immensity, and wielding all the forces of nature, fills our 
conception of absolute being. In the realm of spirit, it is as impos- 
sible to set aside that idea as in the physical realm to get rid of the 
infinity of space and duration. That intense reality is God. — Caz- 
neau Palfrey {Christian Register, Dec. 29, 18S1). 

The same idea has manifold expression in all hymnology. 
Some illustrations hereof, with views concerning God as parent, 
etc., will be presented in the chapters on " Christ's Precepts on 
Piety, Devotion, and Prayer."' For the present suffice the never 
out-worn quotation from Pope's " Universal Prayer M : — 

Father of all, in every age, 

In every clime adored, 
By saint, by savage, or by sage, 

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord ! 
Thou great First Cause, least understood, 

Who all my sense confined, 
To know but this, — that thou art good, 

And that myself am blind. ... , 

To thee, whose temple is all space, 

Whose altar earth, sea, skies, 
One chorus let all beings raise, 

All nature's incense rise ! 

As to what proof of the existence of God is most relied upon 
by modern metaphysicians, perhaps J. D. Morell has given 
the most concisely comprehensive answer, including the argu- 
ment from design, which some, considering the existence of 
pain, etc., think would prove two deities rather than one : — 

Of all the evidences, man is himself a living embodiment If you 
want the argument from design, then you see in the human form the 



DEIFICATION 63 

most perfect of all known organization. If you want the argument 
from beings then man in his conscious dependence has the clearest con- 
viction of that independent and absolute One on which his own being 
reposes. If you want the argument from reason and morals, then the 
human mind is the only known repository of both. Man is, in fact, 
a microcosm, — a universe in himself; and whatever proof the whole 
universe affords is involved in principle in man himself. With the 
image of God before us, who can doubt of the divine type ? — Hist, and 
Crit. View Spec. Philos. of Europe Nineteenth Cent., p. 740. 

Victor Cousin's reference to God as a Trinity, being at the 
same time God, Nature, and Humanity, is, if not a " mixed 
metaphor," an allegorical view from which many dissent, lest 
familiarity breed contempt ; preferring, while Thomas Camp- 
bell's line is true, — 

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, 

not to think that 

God is the green in every blade, 
The health in every boy and maid; 
In yonder sunrise flag he blooms 
Above a nation's well-earned tombs ; 
That empty sleeve his arm contains ; 
That blushing scar his anger drains ; 
That flaunting cheek beneath the lamp 

He hoists for succor from a heart 
Where love maintains a wasted camp 

Till love arrives to take its part ; 
That bloodless face against the pane 

Goes whitening all the murky street ^ 
With God's own dread, lest hunger gain 

Upon his love's woe-burdened feet. John Weiss. 

I myself am an irradiated manifestation of the Supreme Being. 
There is only one Deity: he is the Great Soul. He is called the 
Sun, for he is the Soul of all Beings. — Oldest of the Vedas (1500 B.C.). 

God appears in the best thought, in the truest speech, in the sin- 
cerest action. Through his pure Spirit, he giveth health, prosperity, 
devotion, and eternity to the universe. He is the Father of all 
Truth. — Zoroaster {Zend-Avesta). 

He is the Primeval Father, the Immortal Virgin, the Life, the Cause, 
the Energy of all things. — Orpheus (perhaps contemporary with 
Abraham). 

Heaven and earth take refuge with thee, as a child with its mother. 
— The Vedas (800 B.C.). 

The eason which can be reasoned is not the Eternal Reason. . . . 
Man takes his law from the earth ; earth takes its law from heaven ; 
heaven takes its law from reason; reason takes its law from within 
itself. Use th^ light to guide you home to its own brightness. — 
Lao-tze (604 B.C). 



64 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by the name God 
Almighty ; but by my name Jehovah * was I not known to them. — 
Exodus vi., 3. 

There is One Universal Soul diffused through all things ; eternal, 
invisible, unchangeable; in essence like truth, in substance resem- 
bling light; not to be represented by any image, to be comprehended 
only by the mind; not as some conjecture, exterior to the world, but 
in himself entire, pervading the universal sphere. — Pythagoras. 

Learn from the things which are produced to infer the existence of 
an Invisible Power and to reverence the Divinity. — Socrates. 

As nothing is like the sun except through solar influences, so noth- 
ing can resemble the First Good except by an emanation of his divine 
light into the soul. — Plato. 

There is One Supreme Intelligence, who acts with order, propor- 
tion, and design, the Source of all that is good and just. — Aristotle. 

Heaven penetrates to the depths of all hearts as daybreak illu- 
mines the darkest room. — Confucius. 

I do not blame the variety of representations : only let men under- 
stand there is but one Divine Nature. — Ma timus Tyrius 

I am pervaded by Thee. Thou containest me. Thou art scriptures 
and laws, planets and suns, the formed and the formless. Those who 
possess knowledge and whose minds are pure see the whole world as 
the form of thy wisdom. — The Parana. 

There is but one religion, under many forms, who :ial creed 

is the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man ; ed by 

corruptions, symbolized by mythologies, ennobled by -, de- 

graded by vices, but still the same. "To say that different r 
ship different gods is like saying that they are warmed by different 
suns. — Thomas IV. Higgi?ison. 

There remains one question: Is the anthropomorphic tend- 
ency predicable of Jesus ? u 

I am obliged to think that in the fatherly tenderness of the God of 
Jesus we have simply a reflection of the tenderness of his own heart. 
He was not a student. He was not a reasoner. With him, feeling 
was all in all. He was not such an egotist as to suppose that his 
own love would outstrip the love of Heaven. Less from observ 
of the fact than because the sunshine of his own affection fell equally 
upon the evil and the good, the rain of his own pitying tears equally 
upon the just and the unjust, he made bold to predicate these attrib- 
utes of the Eternal.— John White { ,,-, p. ^41. 



*The Am, Was, and Shall-be. 



Chapter XII. 



PREMONITION, 



How does John the Baptist rank in the Order of Prophets and 

of Martyrs f 

At intervals along down the centuries from Samuel to Mala- 
chi there had appeared individuals of a distinctively marked 
order. Generally, each would suddenly come, a mature man, 
nobody knew from whence. Each by his holy mien, his aus- 
tere life, his pure patriotism, his inspired zeal, his inspiring 
rhapsodies in behalf of righteousness, reverence, and mercy, 
and especially by his audacious forecasting of the sure conse- 
quences of injustice, arrogance, cruelty, sensualism, and idola- 
try, would at once arrest, attract, and irresistibly overawe the 
multitude. John the Baptist revived the function of the 
prophet. It had been recorded * that a prophet like Moses 
should be raised up. No one had come after Moses that had 
made so deep an impression as Elijah. Malachi had distinctly 
announced a reappearance of this prophet. The three or four 
centuries following Malachi were clouded with calamities to 
the nation ; and, when John appeared, everybody was straining 
in expectance of a deliverer. 

John came. He gazed with surprise and loathing on the 
selfishness, corruption, and narrowness of the Jewish leaders ; 
retired aloof to 

A lodge in some vast wilderness ; 

meditated long and intensely; "grew" physically, mentally, 
and religiously; "waxed strong in spirit ";f resolutely dedi- 
cated himself to the desperate, single-handed struggle of reform ; 
had the courage to wait no longer for a prophet who had been 
dead a thousand years to come to earth again, to seize the work 
from Elijah's hand, with the flat to his own soul, "/will do it ! " 
And, anon, he walked forth with the battle-cry, " Repent ! The 

*Deut. xviii., 15. ILuke i., 80. 



66 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Messianic kingdom must come now and here ! Repent, ye 
proud and wicked, or be consumed like stubble, when ' the day 
cometh that shall burn as an oven ' ! " * 

If we ascribe the later Jewish tinge in John's conception of God to 
the influence of his age, and set aside the purely menacing character 
of his language as due to his special conception of his mission, then 
the burden of his preaching perfectly agrees with that of all the other 
prophets. It is a new variation upon the old theme familiar to every 
one of them without exception: " Amend your ways, for Yahveh's jus- 
tice sends all these disasters to chastise you, nor will it suffer him to 
do to you according to his covenant ; but, if you repent, he will com- 
fort you with such bliss and glory as has never yet entered into the 
heart of man to conceive." ... In that which constituted the very 
essence of the prophetic character, the irresistible impulse to stand 
up before the people, the hallowed inspiration to speak to them in 
the name of God, and, above all, the unshaken hope that a glorious 
morro\v would with infallible certainty dissipate the gloom and dark- 
ness of to-day, — in all this John might bear comparison with Jere- 
miah and Micah themselves. — Dr. I. Hooykaas {The Bible for Learn- 
ers, vol. iii., p. 103). 

John feared nothing, and spared no impenitent. To one who 
among wild beasts of the desert had laid down his head under 
no canopy but the sky, and with no defence but the to him 
assured providence of the Most High, a scowling Pharisee, a 
mocking Sadducee,a fawning publican, a rough soldier, or even 
a riotous mob, was only a jolly sight. Around a man who can 
despise accommodations, deal with nature in ancient simplic- 
ity and independence, and move among social and religious 
institutions like a traveller from another world, free to judge, 
to censure or approve, as having himself nothing at stake. — 
around such a man (as an English preacher long ago re- 
marked f) " there is a moral grandeur and authority, to which 
none but the narrowest and most bigoted minds will refuse 
a certain awe and reverence. And when such a personage 
assumes to himself divine commission, and publishes new 
truth with divine authority, and rebukes all wickedness and 
scorns all consequences, he takes, by the natural right of the 
wiser, the bolder, and the better man, a high place above those 
who feel themselves enslaved and enshackled by customs which 
they despise." Three centuries before John came had Aristo- 
tle remarked that " there is no distinguished genius altogether 
exempt from some infusion of madness." 

That such was the character of John, the testimony of Josephus 

* Mai. iv., 1. t Edward Irving. 



PREMONITION 6j 

and the four Gospels is most explicit. To the more arrogant 
and self-orthodox Pharisees that came to him, no doubt he 
thundered forth : ' ; What are you here for ? You ! of a set that 
has not germinated a decent square new idea for centuries ! 
You ! who hope to escape damnation because you are a. coterie 
descended from Abraham ! Why, I teil you children of Abra- 
ham could be made oat of the multitudinous pebbles of this 
river-bank ! Slimy vipers ! before you ask baptism of me, 
overcome your stony-heartedness, your sneaking, wolfish raven- 
ousness ! Be generous and merciful ! When you shall have 
shown by your lives that your application for this emblem 
means business, means work, — the work of purification therein 
symbolized, — come, and welcome ! Until then, begone!" 

Not even the royal purple could overawe him. His denun- 
ciation of the corruption of the court of Herod Antipas, the 
tetrarch, resulted as might be expected. The prophet was im- 
prisoned in the castle of Machaerus, on the east side of the 
Dead Sea, and finally assassinated. Well did he win the title, — 
not in its vulgar acceptation of supernatural foreteller, but in 
the lofty and more philosophical sense of prophet-martyr ! 

But there has been a further suggestion in the premises : — 

Herodias's first husband was her uncle Herod, a son of Mariamne, 
whom his father, Herod the Great, had disinherited. Desiring a 
royal husband, she forsook Herod for her uncle Antipas, who had 
weaned of his Arabian wife. It is not likely, however, that this dra- 
matic situation, sure to attract an evangelist, had anything to do 
with John's imprisonment. But Antipas felt the waves of popular 
enthusiasm beating against the bases of his throne ; his recollection 
was still vivid of the insurrection of Judas the Gaulonite, and he 
could not be expected to distinguish between the spirit of Judas and 
that of John. Nor is it unlikely that the movement of John was 
rapidly assuming a political character. Such was the tendency of 
every Messianic movement— John W. Chadwick ( The Man jesus, 
p. 115). 



Chapter XIII. 

RENUNCIATION. 

Did John the Baptist below* to any Secret tes 

would suggest to him the Ordinance of Bapti 
the Possible Relation of Jesus the?\ 

Probably each was at least acquainted with the Essenes, a 
sect of Jewish monks who were very scrupulous in the obser- 
vance of whatever ceremonies the law prescribed in type of 
personal purity. To avoid contamination and turmoil, these 
communists had withdrawn to the neighborhood of the Dead 
Sea, where at that time their colonies or ham'. ite 

numerous,— perhaps they numbered four thou 
tending was their favorite occupation. They tiatc 

of three years, a solemn oath, and an iron discipli had 

eight degrees. They were unmarried, abstained t of 

meat and wine, partook of a common meal, and devotee, 
selves to pious reflections and speculations tuture, 

prominent in which, no doubt, was the Messiani 
Just how far the intercourse of either John i this 

sect extended cannot now be determined: it never novices 
thereof, they certainly, as to the "pith of the prindi 
ing to personal purity of life, were verv good 

And that, when the predicted Jahveh* should come, he n 
find a band set apart to him, what better initial 
more appropriately impressive rite, than baptism 
the ordinance at once commend itself to the f tor 

from Nazareth, who, no less than John, was casting about 
every available help toward effecting the mora'. *>us 

redemption of his people? He might not approve i 
John's ways, — some proceedings better calculated inc. 
to arouse reform than to render it permanent; but 1. 
deep and holy inspiration, welling from the same sou 
of the puritan prophet of the desert, would tend to flow in a 

•Mai, Hi., i. 



RENUNCIATION 69 

common channel therewith, and prompt the visitor to second 
whatever instrumentality might make for the establishment and 
maintenance of peace and brotherhood in the human family. 
The evidence is conflicting whether the two reformers were 
cousins. Between kindred spirits, no previous acquaintance is 
necessary for each to recognize each. Whenever Jesus first 
approached the prophet — whether on the occasion of the bap- 
tism or previously — there was * 

A glance, a soul revealed by eye to eye, 
A thrill, a voiceless challenge and reply. 

There was no hesitation : both were about their Father's busi- 
ness, and, as Milton says, 

Zeal and duty are not slow, 
But on occasion's forelock watchful wait. 

" Enthusiasts," says Washington Irving, " soon understand 
each other." There were no doubt subsequent interviews, f 
and other Hebrew patriots than themselves J felt to exclaim : — 

A world of blessings on my soul, 

If sympathy of love unite our thoughts. 

And so also " Gentiles." 

To be influenced bv a passion for the same pursuits, and to have 
similar dislikes, is the rational groundwork of lasting friendship. — 
Sallust. 

No social care the gracious lord disdains ; 

Love prompts to love, and reverence reverence gains. L-ucan. 

Even if there was no kinship of blood, would it be anything 
strange if, ere the lapse of half a century, fond legend should 
link together the family circles of the two soul kinsmen, and 
glorify the births of both by angel ushers ? Or strange if the 
same tender afterthought should fuse — or confuse — the met- 
aphors of the Mightier One than John, the Winnowing Hus- 
bandman, the Stern Judge, the Coming Baptizer, the Wielder 
of the Axe, into signifying another than Jahveh himself, § focus 
them upon the grand individuality of Jesus? Or should even 
go to the length of such " a violent exegetical proceeding " || as 
to concentrate in one personage Daniel's Son of Man coming 
with the clouds of heaven,1f the first Isaiah's Branch out of the 
root of Jesse, who should smite the earth with the rod of his 

* Varying Willis' " The world is full of meetings such as this. " 

t John i. , 20, 3 5. + John i. , 37. 

§See The Bible for Learners, vol. iii., p. no. 

{j Dr. Matthew Arnold. If Dan. vii., 13. 



70 RECORDS OF 

mouth, slay the wicked with his brea* lory, 

peace, and righteousness,* the second Isaiah's meek and af- 
flicted Servant of God, charge a prec 
a golden future,! the Lamb of the pass nple ser- 
vice^ and the Holy One of Israel, the Redeem- 
these prophets was the Eternal hi: ".the 
resulting combination the Messiah, - 
Or, in fine, that the lofty rapture of on 

kindle that of a secondhand this that of a thir rhap- 

sodies of the whole procession would, when viewed from any 
other stand-point than their own, co . incur peril of being 

utterly misunderstood? 

Yet while it was natural that John the prophesier had a 
tuition of Jesus, the prophesied comer, a both 

young men of pre-eminently moral a* 

radical difference remain I 'ohn was 

fed from the past by the an 

from his own pure conscio him. 

Consequently, while John \ and narrow, the i: 

of Jesus was unfatho 

tensive, and his aim h of the t 

the then existing cond' 

judgment, — akingdomuf God, — and procl liutitwas 

not in the temperament of John t<> go far en 
other salvation from the imp< an a 

renewed and thorough conformity, on the j .e peo; 

the old Hebrew standard of i 

cernment of Jesus, "the approach .ution \ 

in the establishment, upon the 
order of things." || 

■ Isaiah xi., i, 4. 

named One" (Li 
X Exodus 

§ Isaiah xliii., 14; 
I! Dr. \V. H. Furru 



Chapter XIV. 

INITIATION. 

What Two I r iews as to the Phenomena at the Baptism of Jesus ? 

(i) That there was a supernatural opening of the heavens, 
a literal "Dove* 1 and "Voice.'" (2) That, as to the alleged 
prodigies, the accounts are mere accretions of oral tradition 
upon some casual incident of a flying dove or of light on the 
water: possibly some suggestion to the Ebionite mind from 
Isaiah's words, 4 * The melting fire burneth, and causeth the 
waters to boil." 

The Gospel of the Hebrews has it: ' ; He saw the spirit in 
the form of a dove come down and enter into him. . . . And 
immediately the place about them was lightened by a great 
fire. And when John (who had not seen the dove or heard the 
voice, which were for Jesus alone) perceived the fire he said to 
Jesus. Who art thou, Lord ? And again a voice from heaven 
said to him, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased. Then John fell down on his face before him, and 
said, I pray thee, Lord, do thou baptize me ! But Jesus re- 
strained him, saying, Let it be, for thus must all that has 
been prophesied of me be fulfilled." * 

In this connection, Prof. Drummond remarks \ that Justin 
quotes the voice from heaven at the baptism in this form : 
" Thou art my Son : this day have I begotten thee." " This 
day have I begotten thee " is also in the Ebionite Gospel ; but 
there it is awkwardly appended to a second saying, thus : 
u Thou art my beloved Son. In thee was I well pleased ; and 
again this day have I begotten thee." So that the passage is 
quite different from Justin's, and has the appearance of being 

* As to the threefold voice from heaven, and the date of the Greek and Aramaic 
fragments of the Gospel of the Hebrews, see a summary of the views of Lipsius, 
Holtzmann, Kirchofer, and other Biblical scholars, in Prof. Ezra Abbot's Author- 
ship of tlie Fourth Gospel, p. 9S, — incidental to the discussion of Justin Martyr's 
use, etc., already referred to (ante, chap. iv.). 

t Theological Review, October, 1875. 



72 RECORDS OF JESUS REVi 

a later patchwork. Justin's form of quotati- 1 the read- 

?ng o ?he Codex Bezae in Luke, and a ^stioe 

was found in good manuscripts, though .t be 

Tn the older onel Justin also 

LV^thewater.afirewaskin,. £ 

Gospel relates that, when ™ 

mediately a -reat light shon 1 he author 

rffce y a„on & ymous /./ 

event was related in an heretical work en, 

dicatio, and that it was not found in a peL 1 his, ot 

course, may refer only to the canonical <"' S P<; ,S - 

As to the remaining phenomenon alleged, it has been re- 
marked that the dove, as the ce of spn: 
renovation, whether sent the a: 
a baptized world, • °, r r *£ 
pearino- still to the Hindu <k -. 
of immortality which tl, 

where the pilgrim DM > rm of a dovc ' ,n 

whose flight an omen is d 



Chapter XV, 



TEMPTATION 



What are the Eight Principal 1 7. cerning the Temptation 

of Jesus, and in What Two Convenient Categories t [And 
herein) What is the .Effect of . and of Defeat in the 

Formation of In \l Character 

Those assuming and those not assuming the existence of a 
person, visible or invisible, who, though not having an attribute 
supplanting God's omnipresence, is so ubiquitous as to pass or 
send messengers from one human being to another to incite to 
misdoing, the most consequential of which incitements occurs 
on the occasion of a young man's determining his life career. 

In the first category are two theories: (i)That the tempting 
agency was a visible, supernatural person, and that the narra- 
tive is literally true in every respect. (2) That it is a descrip- 
tion in Oriental dramatic language of an actual temptation 
through evil thoughts which did not voluntarily arise in the 
mind of Jesus, but were suggested by an invisible devil. 

In the second category are six theories: (1) That the event 
was not a supernatural one, the transportation to the temple 
being simply in a figurative sense ; namely, that the tempter 
was a wicked man by whom Jesus was led to Mount Zion, 
where the glory of a temporal ruler was described to him and 
plots against the Romans suggested. (2) That it is a dream or 
vision, or other abnormal mental operation. Prof. J. R. Seeley 
says, " What is called Christ's temptation is the excitement of 
his mind which was caused by the nascent consciousness of 
supernatural power.*' * (3) That it is a myth. 14) That it is 
a parable, wherein Jesus, to get one of the characters, utilized 
the mental furniture bequeathed to his people from Babylon, 
and, to get the other, made himself the central figure, and 
whereby he taught .his disciples how it is temptations assail 
us all, and how we are to resist them. (5) That it was an in- 

* JBcce ffo7no, p. 12 [iS]. 



74 RECORDS OF JESTJ 

ward experience of Jesus, in which the different forms of 

temptation mentioned came to his mind unsu^ any 

one, and that it was related by him to hi the 

dramatic foVm in which we have it in the First and Third 

Gospels. (6) That it is such experience account, expanded 

by the accretions of oral tradition into the pro 

the "Matthew" and "Luke" r : e tost 

case, the account has been CO to the Buddhi 

of Gautama's conflict under the 1 

treat the temptation of 

for his own comfort or a hem to 

himself the Chris 

by human means and 

Before more directly consi | has 

been termed "the ac- 

tion and self-renunciation, it will 
generally accepted apl eminent and n 

spired thinker- 
discipline, hardshij ob- 
scurity, as against 
possible renown.] As 
titude, expertne 
firmation of Paul's 
experience, hope. Th 
tion of yesterday may 
ciphne to to-day ; the 
is a step forward. 

sings Robert Browning, In M R 

life's failure. The soul's uv.i th - 

thing the eye can see on earth, 

from the harbor o 

chosen course by tides 

for no prayers, and w i 

hopes far from the pea 

of prophecy in the large mus 



T 



It was a wise re solution 

•ii • UnC !l nu'int» ^iiiliin A 

Southern statesman from 



TEMPTATION J> 

eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." Man's help must 
be sought from a contemplation of the unattained. He must refuse 
to believe himself beaten when he is cast down. He must refuse to 
despair in any abyss of evil or folly. He must cultivate a noble shame 
and a noble discontent. . . . 

The Faust of the great drama, given into the hands of the mocking 
fiend, seemed lost beyond hope in the entanglements and illusions of 
sense. Guilty and heart-broken, he wandered through a world of 
weariness and shams. But he was too clear-sighted to be deceived 
into thinking the sham a reality, and too noble in aspiration to be 
satisfied with what was base. His soul, that never ceased to desire 
the good, outlived its trial ; and when he stumbled, old and blind, 
through the gate of death, there was heard the chanting of angels, 
who said in their song : — 

noble spirit now is free, 
d from evil Bchemii 
ispires anweariedly 

And, if he feels the 
That from on ' 

: above, 
Shall welcome him I 

//'. //. ter). 

Only he that overcometh can truly gain and advance. The impulses 
to a higher life come with re they are cherished and 

acted on. As we advance, the cords of a divine love draw us more 
steadily and firmly upward, and the hich bind us to earthly 

objects and desires become weaker. A- Dr. Holland truly says : — 

I reached 
But we build the ladder by .• 
rth to the 
i we mount to its summit round by round. 

Joseph //. Mansfield. 

The old theology regards man as being sent into this world as a 
place of probation : the new theology looks on life as a place of educa- 
tion. According to one, it is a court-house; according to the other, a 
school. — Dr. J. F. Clarke {Sermon on the Installation Council's Exami- 
n of Dr. N. Smyth, Saturday ; Gazette, Oct. 2S, 1882). 

Nature fashions no creature without implanting in it the strength 
needful for its action and duration ; least of all does she so neglect 
her masterpiece and darling, the poetic soul. Neither can we believe 
that it is in the power of any external circumstances utterly to ruin 
the mind of a man ; nay, if proper wisdom be given, even so much 
as to affect its essential health and beauty. The sternest sum total 
of all worldly misfortunes is Death : nothing more can lie in the cup 
of human woe; yet many men, in all ages, have triumphed over 
Death, and led it captive ; converting its physical victory for them- 
selves into a seal and immortal consecration for all that their past 



7 6 RECORDS OF JES! 

life had achieved. What has been doi 

is but the degree and not the kind of such I 

different seasons; for without some port 

boisterous daring, but of silent fcarle 

forms, no good man, in any scene or time, has ever attained to be 

good.— Thomas Carlyle {Essay on Bur 

Possession pampers the 
it. — William Hazlitt. 

Calamity is man's trui — A'/W. 

Afflictions clarify the soul.— tries. 

Experience is the 

Sanctified afflictions 

Afflictions are the medicine of the in 
some, let it suffice that tfa fkmfmtm. 

All the clouds an >usly 

of the everlasting chime. — 

When God mak- people I they 

will let it go.— William S. /'swell. 

Let us learn upon earth -lings which call us I '-n. — 

St. Jerome. 

A good man fixes tfa The root 

is filial piety, the fruit brother 

Through danger safety " "dm. 

Adversity is the trial of principle. W th I :*. .now* 

whether he is honest or not — lidding. 

We may me >ws we 

undergone. — EarU i >/. 

The more solitary, the more fi 
the more I will respect and 1 

Who hath not known ill-fort knew him 

virtue. — Ds (let 

Christianity is hard, but gainful The gr ibors 

that have answerable requit lis no 

regard. — Bishop Joseph a 

The life of a mere worldly that 

wastes itself by soaking into the d< 

Character is a perfectly edu, 

A vigorous mind is as necessarily I 
sions as a great tire with great heat.— . *■&,. 



TEMPTATION JJ 

Shallow seas have no whirlpools : superficial men have no absorb- 
ing passion. — Samuel Maunder % 

A wide, rich heaven hangs above you, but it hangs high ; a wide, 
rough world is around you, and it lies very low. — Donald G. Mitchell. 

Strength of character is not mere strength of feeling: it is the 
resolute restraint of strong feeling. It is unyielding resistance to 
whatever would disconcert us from without or unsettle us from 
within. — Charles Dickens. 

Tie down a hero, and he feels the puncture of a pin : throw him 
into battle, and he is almost insensible to pain. — John C. Calhoun. 

The frivolous work of polished idleness. — Sir James Mackintosh. 

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and 
unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversarv, but slinks 
out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not with- 
out dust and heat. — John Milton* 

Massena was not himself until the battle began to go against him. 

— .V -te. 

The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun, the 
brightness of our life is gone : sh f the evening fall behind us, 

and the world seems but a dim rejection itself, a broader shadow, 
look forward into the coming lonely night, the soul withdraws 
itself, then the, stars arise and the night is holy. — Henry IV. 
Longfell 

The pa LCt as winds to propel our vessel, our reason is the 

pilot that steers her. Without the winds she would not move, 
without the pilot she would be lost. — Anon, (from the French). 

They asked Lucman, the fabulist, " From whom did you learn man- 
ners?" He answered, "From the unmannerly." — Moslih-Eddin 

The only equitable manner of judging the character of a man is to 
examine if there are personal calculations in his conduct : if there are 
not, we may blame his manner of judging, but we are not the less 
bound to esteem him. — Baronne de Stac'l- ffolstein. 

Surely, surely, the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that 
which enables us to feel with him, which gives us a fine ear for the 
heart pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance 
and opinion. — George Eliot. 

Our follies and errors are the soiled steps to the Grecian temple of 
our perfection. — J. P. F. Richter. 

When we embark in the dangerous ship called Life, we must not, 
like Ulysses, be tied to the mast : we must know how to listen to the 
sirens and to brave their blandishments. — Arstne Houssaye. 



j8 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the 
sentinel. — Oliver Goldsmith. 

Even in evil, that dark cloud which hangs over the creation, we 
discern rays of light and hope, and gradually come to see in suf- 
fering and temptation proofs and instruments of ^he sublimest pur- 
poses of wisdom and love. — Dr. \V. E. Chaw 

What pains and tears the slightest steps of man's progress have 
cost! Every hair-breadth forward has been in the ime 

soul, and humanity has reached blessing after • of all 

achievement of good with bleeding feet. — Dr. rtol. 

If we rightly estimate what we call good and shall find it 

lies much in comparison. — John Locke. 

The great desiring heart of man, surging with one strong, sympa- 
thetic swell, even though it be to break on the beach of life and 
backward, leaving the sands as barren as bet ing 

and a power in its restlessness with which I must dec :ze. 

— Harriet B. Stowe. 

A liberal education is that which frees a man from himself. " Ye 
shall know the truth, and the truth shall m.ik , , one is 

so much a slave as the man who 
tions, vanities, conceit. — Dr. J F. Clarke, 

Stone walls do ..ike, 

iron liar- 
Minds innocent and quiet take 

That for an hermil 
If I have : 
And in n. 
Angels alone tl 
y such lil 

.Let but the sympathizing heart he spared, 

What sorrow seems not -,.& > 

A deep distress has humanized my - 

As night to sta 

ai . u j hmrd Yeu- 

Alas! by some 

We every bliss must a 
The heart can ne'ei 
That never feels 

The path of sorrow, and that p 
Leads to the land where sorro 

tarn Cow/er % 

Hold the hand that is hapless, and whisper. « They 

^twl;° Ug ** g °° d hght ' and haVe ~*« 

Who h a r Ij eld i°f their K . fa 1 ith ""seduced by the prise that I 
Who have dared for a high cause to suffer. 



TEMPTATION 79 

Speak, history ! who are life's victors ? Unroll thy long annals, and say, — 
Are they those whom the world called the victors, who won the success of a day ? 
The Martyrs, or Nero ? The Spartans who fell at Thermopylae's tryst, 
Or the Persians and Xerxes ? His judges, or Socrates ? Pilate, or Christ ? 

IVilliam IV. Story (*' Io Vict is,*' Blackwood's Magazine). 

The best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer ; 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed. 



Thomas Dekker. 



The good are better made by ill, 
As odors crushed are sweeter still. 



Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might 
Smote the chord of Self, that trembling, passed in music out of sight. 



Samuel Rogers. 

with might ; 
t of sight. 

Alfred Tennyson, 






The thousands that, uncheered by praise, 

Have made one offering of their days ; 

For truth, for heaven, for freedom's sake, 

Resigned the bitter cup to take ; 

And silently, in fearless faith, 

Have bowed their noble souls to death. 

Felicia D. Hemans. 
The pious man, 
In this bad world, when mists and couchant storms 
Hide heaven's fine circlet, springs aloft m faith 
Above the clouds that threat him, to the fields 
Of ether, where the day is never veiled 
With intervening vapors, and looks down 
Serene upon the troublous sea, which hides 
The earth's fair breast; that sea whose nether face 
To grovelling mortals frowns and darkens all, 
But on whose billowy back, from man concealed, 
The glowing sunbeams play. 

Henry Kirke White. 

But all through life I see a cross, 

Where sons of God yield up their breath ; 
There is no gain except by loss, 
There is no life except by death. 
There is no vision but by faith, 
No glory but by bearing shame, 
Nor justice but by taking blame ; 

And that Eternal Passion saith, 
Be emptied of glory and right and name. 

Olrig Grange. 
So many great 
Illustrious spirits have conversed with woe, 
Have in her school been taught, as are enough 
To consecrate distress, and make us 
E'en wish the frown beyond the smile 
Of fortune. 

James Thomson. 
Ah ! languid hand, safe in some scented glove, 

Drop that bright prayer-book ; catch at rock and thorn ; 
Give alms of bread — give truer alms of love — 
To other hands whose stains and scars you scorn ! 

Sarah M. Bryan Piatt. 



80 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

There is a grandeur in the soul that dares 

To live out all the life God lit within ; 

That battles with the passions hand to hand, 

And wears no mail, and hides behind no shield; . . . 

And that with fearless foot and heaven-turned 

May stand upon a dizzy precipice, 

High over the abyss of ruin and not fall. 

Sara J. Clarke Lipfiincott. 

I know the hand that is guiding me 

Through the shadow to the light, 
And I know that all betiding me 

Is meted out aright; 
I know that the thorny path I tread 

Is ruled by a golden line ; 
And I know that the darker life's tangled thread, 

The richer the deep design. 

■ 

I've found some wisdom in my 

That's richly worth retail: 
I've learned that, whi 

There's little harm in fa; 
I may not reach what 1 

Yet will I keep pursu 
Nothing is vain tha: 

Since soul-growth comes uf d< 






Ah! let us hope that to our prai 

Good God not only 
The moments when we ti 

But when the spirit I 
That son i. 

Beyond self-satisfaction, 
When we are simply ;^".»d \\ 

Howe'er we fail in action. 

Who never ate his bread i- 
Who never spent the dai 

Weeping and watching for the I 
He knows you not, ye una 



[A paraphrase of 



A\ LcnxfeiL 



Thorn 



Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranei 

Wer nicht die kumm 
Auf seinem Bette weinend 

Derkennt euch nicht, tl i 
Goei 

How happy is he born or taught, 
Who serveth not anoth 

Whose armour is his honest th< 

And simple truth his 
Whose passions not his mas 

Whose soul is still prepared for death ; 
Not tied unto the world with a 

Of prince's ear or vulgar breath: 
Who God doth late and early i 

More of his grace than \ ad, 

And walks with man from day t< 

As with a brother and a friend. 



[A paraphrase of 



TEMPTATION 8 1 

This man is freed from servile bands 

Of hope to rise, or fear to fall. 
Lord of himself, though not of lands, 

And having nothing, yet hath all. 

Sir Henry IVotton. 1 568-1 639. 

Non possidentem multa vocaveris 

Recte beatum ; rectius occupat 
Nomen beati, qui deorum 

Muneribus sapienter uti, 
Duramque callet pauperium pati, 

Pejusque leto flagitium timet ; 
Non ille pro caris amicis 

Aut patri perire. Horace {Odes IV. 9). Died q B.C. ~\ 

No specious, transient boon I bring: 

Stern Truth alone thy faith can speed. 
The source whence all pure blessings spring 

Is thy Creator. He decreed 

To sluggards no immortal deed. 
There's many a maze that goes amiss. 

One straight and narrow path doth lead 
To heights of Glory and of Peace ; 

And Toil and Vigil guard the gates of Bliss. 
Socrates ("Arete" in the Choice of Hercules in Xenophon 's Memorabilia). 470- 
400 B. C. Paraphrase by B. F. B. 

It is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to 
the evils that we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness 
for fear of what may happen. — Herodotus. 

The heroic, disciplinary, probationary, testing phase of human 
experience thus particularly emphasized by Socrates and He- 
rodotus has been recently well considered in a discourse by Dr. 
J. F. Clarke, — text, James i., 2: " Count it all joy when ye fall 
into divers temptations " : — 

All that man does needs to be tested. " He that is first in his own 
cause seemeth just, but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him." 
Critics may be an evil, but they are a necessary evil. Even critics 
themselves need to be criticised. Who shall judge the judges ? 
There comes after them all a much more awful critic, a judge whose 
decisions are infallible, subject to reversal in no higher court of ap- 
peal, — time, the avenger, the great critic of all human works. Time 
applies to all the deeds of man the test of God's laws and the nature 
of things. These condemn and acquit, punish and reward, strictly 
according to truth. In the long run, the good and the bad are both 
found out. This fire tries every man's work, burns the wood, hay, 
and stubble, and when its flame has ceased leaves the gold, silver, and 
marble standing in their permanent beauty, a joy forever. All the 
critics in the world cannot put down a good book, and all the puffs in 
all the magazines and newspapers cannot give to a poor one a perma- 
nent success. You may call a bad general a Napoleon a thousand 
times, but the terrible day of battle comes, and the fire tries his work. 



82 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

The machine which will not work may be ever so ingenious, but it 
is a failure. The doctor who cannot cure his patients may have grad- 
uated with the highest honors and be covered over with decorations; 
the lawyer who cannot gain his cases, the minister who cannot inter- 
est his hearers, the architect whose houses are cold, damp, ill- 
arranged, the painter whose pictures do not give pleasure, — all popu- 
larity, all mutual admiration, cannot save them. This is the fire which 
tries every man's work. Does it do what it was made to do? that is 
the question. I have listened to old men talking together. They 
were successful men, — great lawyers, mighty merchants, world- 
renowned statesmen. Of what did they speak with the most 
satisfaction? They loved to talk of thei. and youth, of 

their days of poverty and hard struggle. The rich man described 
the time when he found it hard to get a half-dollar. Daniel W 
used to tell with delight how he went out a^ a b v in th< ^ hilly 

morning to drive in the cows, went barefoot through th 
and warmed his poor little bare feet in the places where the cows had 
been lying. These men felt they then got their strength of character. 
At the time, these things seemed hard; but., 
them, they enjoy them better than all their subsequent 

Perhaps, in some other world, we shall, in a like manner, look back 
on our hours of anguish, our long d reavement, 1« 

sorrow, and feel that in those moments the :ed of the 

greatest and noblest development of our Then we 

erosity, loyalty, truth, manliness. Then we 

do some work for God and man. It s ird and unintell: 

now : perhaps hereafter it will be all plain. — Boston Sa 
ing Gazette, July 2, 1881. 

The mighty pyramids of Stone 

That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, 
When nearer seen and better 

Are but gigantic flights i 
The distant mountains that upi 

Their solid bastions to the sk 
Are crossed by pathways that appear 

As we to higher levels rise. 
The heights by great men reached and I 

Were not attained bv sudden rlighi ; 
But they, while their compani 

Were toiling upward in the i 
Standing on what too lor t 

With shoulders bent and d 
We may discern — unseen before — 

A path to higher destinies. 
Nor deem the irrevocable 1 

As wholly wasted, wholly vain, 
If, rising on its wrecks, at last. 

To something nobler we attain. 

Henry IV. Lck^ <t. Aug* 



Chapter XVI. 



INTROS PECTIOX 



What Three Forms of Temptation would be likely to arise a?id 
to recur "for a Season " in the Mind of a Young Man, if he 
were placed in the then Circumstances of Jesus f 

To get body gratification, to get fame, to get power. Jesus 
may be imagined to have come to the baptism with the problem 
considerably well solved, that had long been depressing his 
tender nature : How shall the misfortunes that through human 
selfishness befall the Jewish people — nay, even the whole 
world — be remedied ? Evidently, the entire community will be 
righted, if all the individuals thereof be righted. Next, then, 
how is the individual soul to be harmonized with its environ- 
ment? Evidently, by making the will at one with the design 
of its Author. Next, then, how is attainable this at-one-ment, 
this faith that works by love, this fidelity to the unseen Force 
and Source of goodness, this holding on to the Power not our- 
selves that makes for righteousness ? Jesus had verified 
Micah's answer : let one do justly, love mercy, and walk 
humbly, and to him that ordereth his life conduct aright shall 
be shown salvation from selfishness. His Ideal shall save and 
be saved. 

In a word, objectively all depends on conduct, and subjec- 
tively all depends on spiritual condition. His observation, his 
experience, and his recent prolonged meditations in solitude 
had resulted in his hitting upon the two essentials of such spir- 
itual condition: (i) The Method, Introspection; (2) The 
Secret or Means, Self-renunciation. To this condition he had 
attained, until there was in his person, his presence, his manner, 
his accents, a something full of grace and truth, a something 
which can best — but, then, only approximately — be translated * 
sweet reasonableness. It needed no proclamation from the 
Baptist, no voice from the sky, to convince Jesus that there was 

*From " epieikeia" (II. Cor. x., i), "gentleness of Christ." 



84 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

in himself that rare and remarkable combination of sweetness 
and light, of all that goes to make divinity of character, which 
soothes, attracts, subdues, overawes, and uplifts the wayward, 
the fretful, the disheartened, the distracted, the passion-torn, the 
guilt-tortured. He knew the wants of the times. He saw that, 
however effectively the impetuous* John might awaken the 
masses, there must be something further. John's exhortations 
excited a deep yearning which they left unsatisfied. Xew 
impulses, however grand, must have guidance, training into 
habit, before they bloom into character and fructify into reliable 
conduct. 

What a gigantic work ! His thoughtful spirit has taken him 
into desert solitude. He surveys the whole ground. The 
audacious John must fall a victim of the profligate, foxy, rapa- 
cious Herod. What can one man do then tow 
ing permanently the currupt theocracy or liftir. 
of Rome? He must stand alone against the world, mast 
sentence on all its religious wisdom, must create a new world 
of spiritual thought. Long he ponders. He beco:. i out 

with hunger. " If," questions he, M the Eternal wants this work 
done, will he keep his chosen agent s} 
energies earning bread at the carpente 

sacred legend that he miraculously supplied Isr -ina. 

If victuals cost the Almighty no more than 
not the task of reform be compensated by at 1 
er's board and keeping? Conscious of posse ordi- 

nary powers, why not experiment upon the Ci aliar 

favor, why not verify whether those powers be not mil 
lous? But, then, why conceive the Almighty to I cted 

to a single means of sustenance ? Xo : I will w I my 

heavenly Father gives me what he chooses and in v. 
way pleases him." Many a person in Jesus' place would 
have been so free from morbid fancies as not to hav 
over, a momentary temptation to test I . immunity from 

the consequence of some natural law, ;. 
itation. But that this was the fact in the c 
to many reverential reasoners extreme 

Otherwise as to the whisper of ambition. How 
cent the splendor of the Roman Empire! Ho ;lize 

the grand power within him in obtaining j ent and 

perhaps finally becoming an emancipating princ tome 

worships idols. This had always been the line harp 

demarcation that separated the self-reputed chosen 
heathendom. Shall he turn traitor to the law of his 
'No!" resolves he, "Jahveh alone shall be my 



INTROSPECTION 85 

stripped of the monstrosities of prodigy-loving chroniclers, 
shall be my ideal of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, 
forevermore. I will be his son. He shall be my father. My 
allegiance, as between the two opposite masteries, is chosen. 
Henceforth, the redemption of the world from infernal tumult 
and woe by the salvation of single souls from selfishness shall 
be my life-work. Come hunger, come privation, come toil, 
come torture, come death ! To the very last in myself will I 
exemplify the sole method, self-renunciation, — dying to live, — 
the subordination of the lower self to the higher, of the ephem- 
eral to the eternal. To John's watchword, Repentance, here, 
and now do I add Regeneration. 

"But how that Sanhedrim? How those priests, frozen and 
fossil-bound between two tables of stone? How if their des- 
perate bigotry, jealousy, and rage shall have soon compassed 
my death? Stalwart successors I must have, — sturdy Simon 
first and foremost, and his good brother, Andrew. Noble 
Nathanael and o:her docile ones must be joined, and all be 
indoctrinated. I must move circumspectly at first, — away from 
impatient, precipitate John, and aw r ay from Jerusalem and the 
stung hierarchy. Busy Capernaum, seated in the world's high- 
way, will have to be the starting-point whence the light and 
warmth shall radiate. Thence around shall circulate the 
leaven. Thus must begin the domain of good-will, and thus 
only I be the "Messiah to a kingdom of heaven on earth." 

And with this resolve of Jesus came peace, — came sweet 
thoughts, and ministered unto him like welcome, consoling 
messengers from some never failing Friend. In that travail 
— that conjuncture of inspiration and exaltation — was born 
the Sermon erelong to be uttered on the Mount that over- 
looked the budding blooms of Genesareth. And so with Milton 
define we the Temptation : — 

Victorious deeds 
Flamed in thy heart, heroic acts, — one while 
To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke ; 
Men to subdue, and quell, o'er all the earth, 
Brute violence and proud tyrannic power, 
Till Truth were freed and equity restored ; 
Yet held it more humane, more heavenly just 
By winning words to conquer willing hearts, 
And make persuasion do the work of fear. 

Not substantially differing from the foregoing is another 
view of the workings of the mind of Jesus at another period : — 

In the second part of Isaiah (chap. xl. to Ixvi.), which we know to 
have been written by some prophet of the captivity, about 536 B.C., 
but which Jesus, like all his contemporaries, ascribed to the true 
Isaiah of the eighth century B.C., in this wonderful fragment, the 



86 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

cap-sheaf of Old Testament prophecy, there figures prominently " the 
servant of God," who is represented as a teacher or prophet, thus : 
" Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my s-oul 
delighteth. I have put my spirit upon him : he shall declare judg- 
ment to the Gentiles. He shall not strive nor cry. He shall declare 
judgment with truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he set 
judgment in the earth : far lands wait for his law." We may be sure, 
I think, that, so far as the Messianic self-consciousness of Jesus 
nourished itself upon Scriptural food, it found it in these and other 
similar passages of the Deutero-Isaiah. Jesus was here less critical 
than the rabbis of his time, for they understood the "servant of 
God" in these passages to mean the Jewish people, or the body of 
faithful Jews; and modern criticism has almost unanimously cor- 
roborated their opinion. Now, in the same fragment (chap.' liii.), 
the Servant of Jehovah is represented as debased and suffering, 
while at the same time his ultimate triumph is portended. " He was 
despised and rejected of men, a man of . and acquainted 

with grief." In the oratorio of "The Messiah," the t 
sage in the music is that which corresponds to these words. This is 
as it should be, for we may well believe that no other pa n the 

Old Testament was so central to the thought of > not 

mean that his anticipation of a catastrophe ending to his mi- 
was entirely derived from this text and its context. H ation 
of the spirit of the Pharisees, as he saw them in Galilee, led him to 
expect the worst when he should meet them in Jerusalem, ai 
meant to meet them with a gesture of defiance ; but what was predi- 
cated in Isaiah liii. of the Servant of Jehovah tallied almost exactly 
with his natural anticipation. " Surely," the proph< hath 
borne our griefs; ... yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him." The 
-contemporaries of Jesus did not apply these words to the Messiah ; 
but Jesus did, and therefore to himself. Even before the announce- 
ment at Caesarea-Philippi, he must often have brooded over them. 
The future which they pictured for him was very di rom that 
which his own hopeful and loving heart had pictured at the I 
nmg of his ministry, only ten months aeo; but there had been no 
break in the development of his ideas. Now, the conviction of im- 
pending shame and death would haunt him more and more. Mean- 
time, the idea of a suffering Messiah would shock the zealots and 
the Pharisees, and excite their animositv. Nor was it strange that it 
should do so. For one man to set up his idea of the Messiah in 
opposition tothe entire community, an idea diametrical: d to 
the popular idea, was certainly audacious, and could 'hardlv meet 

with anything but fierce resentment We have recenl told 

that, to appreciate the sufferings of Jesus, we must apprehend 
as a suffering God. What an absurdity is this! Who could 
suffer anything with the resources of an infinite nature to fall I 
upon ? The glory of Jesus is that as a man, and so consider 
self,— for being the Messiah did not unman him,— he went to meet 
a miserable doom with an unquestioning submission to the lode of 
events.-/. W. Chadwick [The Man Jesus, pp. i 47j i 54 ). 



Chapter XVII. 



HARMONIZATION. 



Wherein are Introspection and Self-renunciation, as exempli- 
fied by Jesus* effective toward harmonizing the Lower 
Human Te?idencies with the Higher and resisting Tempta- 
tion to Sin ? 

" An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." The 
question involves a definition of " sin." Sin is the voluntary 
violation of the law of one's being. This law demands such 
harmonious exercise of the function of any one faculty of the 
human organization that the proper function — the being — of 
another faculty shall not be overborne. Moralists and legis- 
lators declare that conduct resulting from intellectual and emo- 
tional inaction, causing passivity or absence of volition, is often 
as ruinous and wrong as actively wilful misdoing. In the 
plain, terse parlance of the prayer-meeting, " a realizing sense 
of the exceeding sinfulness of sin " must include " sins of 
omission as well as of commission." 

So the categories of sin interact in a circle. Misuse of the 
intellect, or of the sensibilities, or of the will, or of the body, 
is abuse of the whole. When a man fails to comply with the 
corporal command for food, inadequacy of replenishment of 
blood, sinew, nerve, and brain, enfeebles intellectual forecast. 
" No man," says George Eliot, " can be wise on an empty 
stomach." Conversely, want of forecast imports want of pro- 
vision: by popular synecdoche, subject and object are one* 
So also as to the other correlations. Want of clear thinking 
imports want of resolution ; and, conversely, irresolution im- 
ports uncertainty of determination. Want of attention to the 
pros and contras of the exercise of the motive, the executive, 
the procreative, or any other power, — instinctive, emotional, or 
semi-intellectual, — reacts in paralysis and disorder of the en- 
tire circuit. "Modesty," says Mirabeau, " has its sins, and a 
kiss its innocence." In phrenological nomenclature, there are 



88 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

possible both uses and abuses of every talent, — of combative- 
ness, destructiveness, amativeness, firmness, nay, even of con- 
scientiousness, veneration, and self-respect. Indeed, the lia- 
bility extends to the action of the ratiocinative and aesthetic 
faculties. Even in the perception of incongruities and the 
exposure of errors is there opportunity to operate the choosing 
of " the middle extreme." 

More and more, all along down the centuries, do sages 
confirm Izaak Walton's prefatory observation, disallowi: 
''severe, sour-complexioned man" to be a competent jucL 
discerning the value of genial pabulum to the soul. 

Give me an honest laugher. — Sir Walter Scott. 

God smiled when he put humor into the human disposition, and 
said, "That is good." — Henry Ward B tec her. 

Mildly commingled, mimicry and mirthfulness make good medicine 
for many minds' maladies. — Thorn is Jefferson Burn' 

Alas for him who never * 
The sun shine through hit 

John G. Wh. 



How charming is divine philosonl. 
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull too 

For other things, mild heaven a time ordains, 
And disapproves that care, thou. 
That with superfluous burden loads the c: 
And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refi 






John . 



And ever against eating c 

Lap me in soft Lydian a. 

Married to immortal va 

Such as the melhng soul may pierce, 

In notes, with many a winding bout 

Of linked sweetness long i 

Untwisting all the chains thai 

The hidden soul of harmony. J 0n 

Asceticism,— " that way madness 1 Of this fault of 

John the Baptist, Jesus might be said to have taken warnin 
if need of warning were at all predicable in the premise 
and to have been convivial whenever duty so demanded, 
as to the methods of truth against sham and show, satir 
often considered a legitimate pulpit weapon. But he who 
holds the mirror up to the foibles and idiosvnerasies of some 
public speakers must have a care against the 'sin of " scotr. 
And so on through Paul's entire list of -things which are not 
convenient. To shun sin is to avoid evervthimr abnormal,— 
symmetrically to develop a sound mind 'in abound bo 

*See Swedenborg's N. J. D., n. 196. 



HARMONIZATION 89 

But, in denning symmetry, the criticism once made on Pope's 
line, 

An honest man's the noblest work of God, 

may be considered ; namely, " the reputation of men is to be 
prized not from their exemption from fault, but from the size of 
those virtues they are possessed of." 

A true mental philosophy accepts all the facts of human experi- 
ence. It sees the mechanism of mind, but it also observes the 
nobler powers which make man a living soul and a child of God. . . . 
We grow broader not by seeing error, but by seeing more and more 
of truth. — Dr. James Freeman Clarke. 

Character is not cut in marble, — is not something solid and unal- 
terable. It is something living and changing, and may become dis- 
eased as our bodies do. — George Eliot. 

Insanity is not a distinct and separate empire : our ordinary life 
borders upon it, and we cross the frontier in some part of our nature. 

— Hippolyte Adolphe Thine. 

The higher feelings, when acting in harmonious combination, and 
directed by enlighten -d intellect, have a boundless scope for gratifi- 
cation : their least indulgence is delightful, and their highest activity 
bliss. — George Combe. 

When we speak against one capital vice, we ought to speak 
against its opposite : the middle betwixt both is the point for virtue. 

— Alexander Pope. 

A character that is all piety is as much a perversion as one that is 
all business. The complete man is "not slothful in business," while, 
at the same time, he is "fervent in spirit." — Dr. W. H. Ryder (Open 
Letter to Dwight L. Moody). 

A taste of every sort of knowledge is necessary to form the mind, 
and is the only way to give the understanding its due improvement to 
the full extent of its capacity. — John Locke. 

It is the glorious prerogative of the empire of knowledge that what 
it gains it never loses. On the contrary, it increases by the multiple 
of its own power: all its ends become means; all its attainments help 
to new conquests. — Daniel Webster. 

In order to be greatly good, one must imagine intensely and com- 
prehensively ; he must put himself in the place of another and of many 
others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. 
The great instrument of moral good is imagination, and poetry ad- 
ministers to the effect by acting upon the cause. — Percy B. Shelley. 

The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be 
cultivated in public. — Dr. Samuel Johnson. 



90 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Knowledge has in our time triumphed, and is still triumphing, 
over prejudice and over bigotry. The civilized and Christian world 
is fast learning the great lesson that difference of nation does not 
imply necessary hostility, and that all contact need not be war. 
The whole world is becoming a common field for intellect to act in. 
Energy of mind, genius, power, wheresoever it exists, may speak out 
in any tongue, and the world will hear it. — Daniel Webster. 

Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of 
purpose. — Earle Bulwer-Lytton. 

Principle is a passion for truth. — William Hazlitt. 

There is no music in a " rest " that I know of, but there's the 
making of music in it. . . . Patience is the finest and worthiest part 
of fortitude, and the rarest too. — John Ruskin. 

I was never less alone than when by myself.— . 

For solitude sometimes is be?* 

And short retirement urges sweet return. 

John Milton. 
By all means use sometimes to be alone. 

Salute thyself. See what tl \r. 

Dare to look in thy chest, — for 'tis thine own,— 

And tumble up and down what thou find'st there. 

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 

These three alone "lead lift 

Yet not for power (power of he 

Would come uncalled for), but to live bv law, 

Actingthe law we live by without I 

And because right is right to follow right 

Were wisdom in the scorn of consequei. 

rennyson. 
He was a-weary ; but he fought his 

And stood for simple Manhood ; 
To see the august broadening of the 

And new worlds heaving heavenward from the v 
He loved his fellows, and their loi 
Plant daisies at his head and at hi> I 

RLfuird Real/. 
There is no ending to thv road, 
No limit to thy nee: 
But speeds the e ., m i 

From truth to truth, from I ;od. 

John ir. Chadwick. 

X et A\u 0} !u tn0 u thr ° u S h the a S es one increasing pur 

And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the I 

Alfred Tennyson. 

Build thee more stately mansions, O mv soul, 

As the swift seasons roll. 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ; 

Let each new temple, nobler than the las 

bhut thee from heaven with a dome more 

lill thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine out-grown shell by life's unres- 

Dr. /i.:mrs. 



HARMONIZATION 91 

The flower horizons open, the blossom vaster shows ; 

We hear the wide world's echo, — " See how the lily grows !" 

Sin has sometimes been defined a violation of conscience ; * 
conscience, " a sympathetic recognition of social equity passing 
into appropriate action w ; and virtue, the acquired strength 
of will to transmute such recognition into such action. This, 
like facility of recognition of duty, or like any other power, 
comes through trial and by exercise of the faculty itself. Ac- 
cordingly, each temptation overcome renders every succeeding 
recurrence less and less formidable, t 

Perfection — as culture, from a thorough, disinterested study of 
human nature and human experience, learns to conceive it — is an 
harmonious expansion of all the powers that make the beauty and 
worth of human nature, and is not consistent with the over-develop- 
ment of any one power at the expense of the rest. But this idea of 
perfection is at variance with our want of flexibility, with our inap- 
titude for seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense 
energetic absorption in the pursuit we happen to be following. — Dr. 
Matthew Arnold {Culture and Anarchy -, p. 14). 

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of ignorance. — 
A. Bronson Alcott. 

In judging of others, a man often erreth ; but, in examining him- 
self, always laboreth fruitfully. — Thomas a Kempis. 

One power rules another, none can cultivate another ; in each en- 
dowment, and not elsewhere, lies the force which must complete it. 
There are few who at once have Thought and the capacity for Ac- 
tion. Thought expands, but lames ; Action animates, but narrows. 
A man is never happy till his vague striving has itself marked out 
its proper limitation. — Goethe { Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship). 

Action is generally defective, and proves an abortion without 
previous contemplation. Contemplation generates, action propa- 
gates. — Owen Felt ham. 

Reading seeks, meditation finds, prayer asks, contemplation 
tastes. — St. Augustine. 

A man's collective dispositions constitute his character. — Dr. L. H» 
Atwater. 

This self-confident, this hurrying, unripe, aspiring character which 
makes nothing of meditation ; this boldness without strength and 
ardor without depth, — let us bring it to the touchstone of our perfect 

*Sin is choosing and acting in opposition to our sense of right. — Dr. W. E. 
Channing {Works, iv., 151). 

t See Aphorisms, chap, xv., pp. 74, &., ante. 



92 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Lord, and see how his character rebukes it. — Dr. Theodore D. 

Woolsey. 

Mark this well, ye proud men of action ! Ye are, after all, nothing 
but unconscious instruments of the men of thought. — Heinnch 
Heine. 

A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him 
an almanac; a talent for debate, a disputant; skill to get money 
makes him a miser, — that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflam- 
mations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant 
talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watche- 
For performance, Nature has no mercy, and sacrifices the performer 
to get it done ; makes a dropsy or a tympany of him. If she wants a 
thumb, she makes one at the cost of arms and legs, and any 
power in one part is usually paid for at once bv some defect in a 
tiguous part. — Ralph Waldo Emerson {Con,: 

All are architects of Fate, 

Working in these walls of Time; 
Some with massive deeds and _ 

Some with ornaments of 



Build to-day, then, strong and i 

With a firm and ample b.. 
And ascending and secure 

Shall to-morrow find its pj 
Thus alone can we attain 

To those turrets, where the - 
Sees the worid as one vast plain, 

And one boundless reach of ^ky. 

H* ILnu 



Another phase of this topic will be considered in di 
the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, cha: 



Chapter XVIII. 



DEMONIZATION, 



What are the Principal Different Views concerning the Exist- 
ence of a Personal Devil, and the Teachings of Jesus in Gen- 
eral thereon f 

(i) That of Schleiermacher, who is positive that the expres- 
sions of the New Testament concerning the devil cannot be 
harmonized in one conception, but have been blended together 
from various constituent parts ; that the doctrine of such an 
entity subverts itself; and that Jesus and his apostles must 
have availed themselves incidentally of the popular belief 
without intending to develop or to ratify any doctrine upon the 
subject. Thus, one element was disclosed by the remark to 
Simon that Satan had desired to have him and to sift him, 
indicating the tendency of the unstable in faith and life to be 
taken by surprise in evil machinations. The other element 
was derived from the Persian Dualism, so far as the essential 
existence of evil could be adopted by a monotheistic people. 

(2) That the fasting produced an ecstatic state of mind, 
which was interpreted as opening communication with the un- 
seen world. The old Oriental idea, still common among the 
Arabs, is adduced, that the soul of an insane person is pos- 
sessed by some higher power. Luther's mental condition is 
instanced, wherein he had a vision of the devil in his room in 
the castle of the Wartburg, and flung his inkhorn at him. The 
legend of angels coming and ministering unto Jesus reminds 
R v. M. J. Savage of Gautama, the last Buddha : — 

He, too^was tempted by all the evil spirits in all the heavens and 
in all the hells. And, when at last he had conquered, the waiting 
and ministering spirits filled the air with perfumes and scattered 
flowers all around him, and came and lifted him up and helped him. 
Stories like these belong to more than one of the world's religions. 
We cannot believe their literal truth, for the reason that Macaulay 
said he could not believe in ghosts, — he had "seen too many of 
them." — Talks about Jesus, p. 72. 



94 



RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 



(V) The " Orthodox" view has been most ably set forth by 
Bishop Martensen. He thinks the " cosmical " principle, the 
tempting principle, becomes the actual devil, the personal 
devil for the first time when man has allowed him entrance 
into the sphere of consciousness: that it is man, therefore, who 
gives the devil being. But it by no means follows from this 
that man is his own devil: "it is another, a superhuman princi- 
ple to which existence is imparted by man, a tempting, seduc- 
ing, making-possessed, a d inspiring power, to which man 
lends himself as to a non-ego" And as to the E<!en serpent, 
the legend of which is said to have been first united to the 
devil tradition in the Talmud about 200 A. I).. Bishop Mar- 
tensen says : — 

It is the law of the cosmical principle to be subordinate to the 
kingdom of God ; but, in order to become the foundation upon which 
service may rest, it must first act as an exciting power, most throw 
itself in man's way, and show him the possibility of rebelling against 
God, of saying no when God says yes. According to the moral ex- 
planation, the serpent is to be regarded as the symbol of 1 ulu 
toward independence, becoming active in man and inciting him to 
become free apart from his Creator. But this impulse toward inde- 
pendence could most assuredly never become active in man, if it had 
no foundation whatever in the constitution of the creature, if it had not 
its deepest root in a principle which is active in all created thin 
The serpent is the outward expression for this principle which creeps 
up to man to obtain an entrance The forbidden fruit is the glitter- 
ing world phenomenon which invites man to enjoy it and to make 
himself its possessor. — Christian Dogmatics {Urwick's translation), 
§79- 

Dr. Hedge, in his chapter on " Dualism and Optimism," 
says : — 

From the Zoroastrian religion, the principle of dualism pas 
into Judaism, and thence into Christendom. The pseudo-Christian 
idea of the Devil is its lineal and legitimate fruit. I call it pseudo- 
Christian ; for though Jesus employed the term, or, if you pie., 
the conception, as a given article in the mental furniture of his time, 
he by no means accents it in a way to authorize its acceptance 
a necessary constituent of the Christian creed. It is s anv 

longer regarded as such. Of Christian beliefs once unfcersally re- 
ceived, and never so much as questioned, there is none which sec 
to have passed into such general discredit, none which is losing 
fast its hold of the popular mind. The Devil is still a name to swear 
by, and still, as a figure of speech, represents a spiritual fact, but no 
longer stands for an ontological or statistical one. There is some- 
thing very curious and not easily explained in this noiseless and im- 
perceptible dropping out from the mind and creed of mankind of 



DEMOXIZATION 95 

a once universal and rooted conviction. For nearly two thousand 
years, the belief in Satan was as fixed as any belief whatsoever in 
the mind of Christendom. For more than a thousand, the doctrine 
of the Atonement was not, as modern Orthodoxy conceives it, a sat- 
isfaction of divine Justice, but was understood as a satisfaction of 
Satan, to whom the wo r Jd was supposed to have become forfeit by 
sin. The early Church, among its regular officials, had always one 
whose business it was to fight the Devil, in the person of any of his 
subordinates who might take possession of a human subject. In 
every church, the exorcist was as much a stated functionary as the 
deacon or the priest. The idea of Satan was not one of those which 
the Protestant Reformation repudiated. . . . Luther insisted, " We are 
but guests in a world of which the Devil is the prince and the god." 

The real Devil, as figured in Mephistopheles, is "the spirit that 
denies," the opposing, unbelieving, bitter, mocking spirit, — the spirit 
whose idiom is sarcasm, whose life is a sneer. There is nothing 
more alien from Godhead, nothing more undivine, more antagonistic 
to all divineness, than such a spirit, whose natural symbol is the ape, 
and whose theological expression is " the sin against the Holy Ghost." 
— Dr. Frederic H. Hed^e ( Ways of the Spirit, pp. 239, 242). 

Thus through the world, like bolt and blast 
And scourging fire, the truth has passed. 
Clouds break ; the steadfast heavens remain ; 
Weeds burn ; the ashes feed the grain ! 

A non. 

The low desire, the base design, 

That makes another's virtues less; 
The revel of the ruddy wine, 

And all occasions 01 excess ; 
The longing for ignoble things ; 

The strife for triumph more than truth ; 
The hardening of the heart, that brings 

Irreverence for the dreams of youth ; 
All thoughts of ill, — all evil deeds, 

That have their root in thoughts of ill ; 
Whatever hinders or impedes 

The action of the nobler will, — 
All these must first be trampled down 

Beneath our feet, if we would gain 
In the bright fields of fair renown 
The right of eminent domain. 

Henry IV. Longfellow {T/ie Ladder of St. Augustine). 

Another phase of the doctrine of a personal devil will be 
considered in the chapter on Damnation (xlii., post). 



Chapter XIX. 



TRANSGRESSION. 



What are the Different Orthodox and Other Leading Meta- 
physical Views concerning the "Mystery of the Fair' 1 
Chris? s Teachings thereon t 

Kant considered the fall and redemption of man to mean 
simply the necessary transition of Reason from the state of 
nature to that of culture. Schleiermacher propounded as an 
explanation of sin that the sensuous consciousness has ob- 
tained a start before man's consciousness of God: that this 
bondage of the higher intellectual consciousness must a: 
appear to man himself as a false relation, as somethi 
which he must strive to be released. Fichte made the ego begin 
with being held in bonds by the non-ego, 1 1 from 

its very conception, must first conquer I 
he made evil the vis inertiac, in consequence of which the 
inclines to remain in its original state of nature instead of 
undertaking the labor of going out of and beyond itself. 

Manes, a Persian who tried to combine the Oriental philoso- 
phy with Christianity, maintained that there are two supreme 
principles, light and darkness, the one good, the other evil, 
which produce all the happiness and calamities of the world. 
The Manicheans, accordingly, hold to an irreconcilable con- 
flict between nature and mind.* » 

The Infralapsarians are those Calvinists who consider the 
decree of election to contemplate the apostasy as past, and the 
elect as being in a fallen and guilty stau ipsa- 

rians consider this decree to contemplate the elect as per- 
to be created, and to apostatize with the rest of the race, and 
then to be recovered by divine grace. The former considered 
the election of grace as a remedy for an ex 
latter, as a part of God's original purpose in regard to men. 
Bishop Martensen, after adverting to the effort of Leibnitz 

*See ante, chap, xviii., Dr. Hedge on "Dualir 



TRANSGRESSION gj 



other Supralapsarians to set forth the alleged fall as a felix 
culpa, says : — 

The true optimism and the true Theodicy are to be looked for 
in the blending of v the Supralapsarian and the Sublapsarian views. 
Christian optimism recognizes the unconditional necessity of the In- 
carnation; and, as upon this principle it regards human nature in the 
light of redemption, it can adopt the exclamation, Felix culpa ! For, 
though sin was not willed by God, it could not occur beyond the 
range of his counsels: though God has not ordained it, it becomes 
a teleological force for the revelation of God's love. . . . History is 
the living drama of freedom, wherein all points are affected by the 
movement not only of divine thought, but also of holy will. . . . The 
pessimist views and subjective ideals regarding the world belong only 
to the stand-point of sinfulness itself. — Christian Dogmatics ( Urwick's 
translation), § S9. 

And yet, somehow, when one does take a survey of history 
or lifts his eyes out of the books of the metaphysicians to the 
world around, he is reminded of Bishop Francis Hare's apho- 
rism : M Nothing is farther than earth from heaven, nothing is 
nearer than heaven to earth." And this suggests the apho- 
rism of Nathaniel Hawthorne : " No fountain so small but that 
heaven may be imaged in its bosom"; and also the inquiry 
of Tulloch : u How happened it that Jesus* doctrine of sin es- 
caped the taint of asceticism, and of that conception of evil, 
then not unknown within as well as without Palestine, which 
regarded matter as the abode of corruption ? " 

I see that good men are not so good as I once thought they were, 
and I find that few are so bad as either malicious enemies or censori- 
ous separating professors do imagine. — Richard Baxter. 

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us : 
He knows each chord, its various tone ; 

Each spring, its various bias; 
Then at the balance let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it. 



What's done we partly may compute, 
But know not what s resisted. 



Robert Burns. 



In men whom men pronounce as ill, 

I find so much of goodness still ; 
In men whom men pronounce divine, 

I find so much of sin and blot, 
I hesitate to draw the line 

Between the two when God has not. Joaquin Miller. 

Good has but one enemy, the evil ; but the evil has two enemies, 
the good and itself. — Julius Miiller. 



98 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Schleiermacher's averment, that sin comes from the sensuous 
consciousness having gotten the start of man's consciousness 
of God, recalls a conversation between a doctor of medicine 
and a doctor of divinity in a story written by a medical pro- 
fessor, the heroine of which met with a moral misfortune a 
few months before her birth, her mother being bitten by a 
rattlesnake. The medical side of the colloquy (marred by this 
abridging) is partly as follows : — 

Ministers work out the machinery of human responsibility in an 
abstract kind of way: doctors have to study a child from the moment 
of birth upwards, and our algebra must constantly consider two fac- 
tors, — friction and strength (or weakness) of material. We see him, 
for the first year or so, trained by his maker to pure selfishnc 
order that he may be sure to take care of himself. When he comes 
to make his first choice between right and wrong, he is at a d 
vantage from this vis a tergo of a whole year's life of selfishness. If 
stout, red, and lively, we expect to find him troublesome, noisy, 
perhaps disobedient, more or less : if he is weak and pale-faced, he 
will be very likely to sit in the house and read \ other 

good children that were indifferent to the out-door amusemei 
the wicked little red-cheeked children. Some of the little folk 
watch grow up to be young women, and occasionally one of them 
gets nervous, what we call hysterical ; and that girl will begin to play 
all sorts of pranks, — to lie and cheat, perhaps in the most unac 
able way, so that she might seem to a minis* >le of 

total depravity. We don't see her in that light. We give her 
and valerian, and get her on horseback if we can, and 
make her will come all right again. By and by, we 
a baby threescore years and ten or more old.' We find that thi 
baby has never got rid of that first year's teaching which led b 
fill his stomach with all he could pump into it, and h 
everything he could grab. People call him a miser. We are 
for him ; but we cannot help remembering his first raining. 

We see all kinds of monomania and insanity. We learn fronrthem 
to recognize all sorts of queer tendencies in minds to be 

sane, so that we have nothing but compassion for a I; 
persons condemned as sinners by theologians, but 
as invalids. We have constant reasons for noticing the transm 
of qualities from parents to offspring ; and we find it hard to hold a 
child accountable in any moral point of view for ink mper 

or tendency to drunkenness, as hard as we should to blame hin 
inheriting gout or asthma. 

Ministers talk about the human will as if it stood on a high look- 
out, with plenty of light, and elbow-room reaching to the^ho: 
Doctors are constantly noticing how it is tied up and darkened bv 
inferior organization, by disease and all sorts of ci 
ences, until they get to look upon Hottentots and Indian? — and a 
good many of their own race — as a kind of self- >us blood- 



TRANSGRESSION 99 

clocks, with a very limited power of self-determination. That's the 
tendency, I say, of doctors' experience ; but the people to whom they 
address their statements of the results of their observation belong to 
the thinking class of the highest races, and they are conscious of a 
great deal of liberty of will. So in the fact that civilization with 
all it offers has, on the whole, proved a dead failure with the aborigi- 
nal races of this countrv. they talk as if they knew from their own 
will all about that of a Digger Indian. — D?\ Oliver W. Holmes {Elsie 
Venner y chap. xxii.). 

The doctor's expression " old baby " reminds us of John 
Dryden's lines : — 

Men are but children of a larger growth : 
Our appetites are apt to change as theirs, 
And full as craving too, and full as vain.* 

Also of Coleridge's words, " In To-day already walks To-mor- 
row " ; and Huxley's, too, "A man's worst difficulties begin 
when he is able to do as he likes." 

The doctor's declaration as to the effect of physical upon 
spiritual conditions reminds us of Lord Chesterfield's re- 
mark : " A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine 
morning have often made a hero of the same man, who, by 
indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning, would have 
proved a coward." 

The doctor's remark on hereditary transmission of qualities 
is well illustrated by " Margaret the Criminal." She was a 
pauper child left adrift in one of the villages on the upper 
Hudson, about ninety years ago. There was no almshouse in 
the place, and she was made a subject of out-door relief, 
receiving occasionally food and clothing from the town officials, 
but was never educated nor sheltered in a proper home. She 
became the mother of a long race of criminals and paupers, 
which has cursed the county ever since. In one generation of 
her unhappy line there were twenty children, of whom seven- 
teen lived to maturity. Nine served terms aggregating fifty 
years in the State Prison for high crimes, and all'the others 
were frequent inmates in jails and almshouses. Of the 623 
descendants of this outcast girl, 200 committed crimes which 
brought them upon the court records ; and most of the others 
were idiots, drunkards, lunatics, paupers, or prostitutes. Alas ! 
of how many it may be said as Mrs. Hale avers of Nell 



T ™*£ n exceptionally good illustration will be found in the character of Jedwort, in 
J. T Trowbridge's story, "The Man who stole a Meeting-house " (Coupon Bonds, 
and Other Stories, p. 369). & K F 



IOO RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Gwynne : " ' Poor Nellie ' was the victim of circumstances, not 
the votary of vice." * 

Society prepares the crime : the criminal commits it. — Henry T. 

Buckle. 

A pebble on the streamlet scant 

Has turned the course of many a river ; 
A dew-drop on the baby plant 

Has warped the giant oak forever. 



It is the little rift within the lute, 

That by and by will make the music mute, 

And, ever widening, slowly silence all. 



CJuirlotte Cossitt. 



Alfred Tennyson. 



As to the old Calvinistic view of the fall of Adam, it has 
lately been said : — 

Should a physician place a son of fifteen years in a plague hospital, 
expecting, nay, certain that he would incur the disease, and that he 
would propagate it to innumerable others, that he might show his 
skill in combating it, would not language fail to characterize the 
deed? — Henry Ward Beecher {North American i August, i 

And similarly as to the Anglican view : — 

The burial service, a survival from barbarism, declared death to be 
sent by God's wrath in vengeance for the sin of Adam; when even 
the illiterate know that death made the earth beneath us a cemetery 
of animal form before man existed. In presence of weeping friends, 
it thanked God for taking the beloved historian Motley out of this 
wicked world, every tear giving the heart's lie to the lips' thanks- 
giving. The historian had been a philosopher, and every sentence 
of the ceremony was contradicted by the testimony of his life. — 
Moncure D. Conway {Sermon in the Commonwealth, Dec. 1 1, 1880). 

As to the freedom of the will, we must concede something to 
Morell's theory ; namely, that if what is termed a motive be 
not an objective reality, but merely the mind itself in a certain 
state of feeling, man, though under the necessity of acting in ac- 
cordance with motives, is free. He cannot, it is true, alter the 
relation which God has established between emotions and 
volitions generally, but he may modify his own states of feeling, 
and through these his volitions also: just as a sine. bein. 
function of an angle, if you require a sine of a different magni- 
tude, the onlv possible way of obtaining it is by takin. 
angle of a different magnitude. Volition is a function of the 



*See in Sarah J. Hale's Biography of Distinzuistud Women, p. 338, a portrait 
wherein Nell's face is not wanting in spiritual loveliness. 



TRANSGRESSION IOI 

mind. Our mental states do not solely depend on external 
circumstances, but also upon our own spontaneity.* 

This theory, of course, denies that all mental phenomena 
are derived from sensation. It considers them in three classes: 
(i) In elligence, which creates conceptions, rules of action; 

(2) Sensibility, which supplies inducements, impulses; and 

(3) Will, which creates effort, the emission of voluntary power. 

Faith and trust, and the pledging of ourselves to the infinite will 
and love, are qualities that cannot be created in us by the Almighty 
as natural forms of our inward constitution : they are results of the 
spiritual powers set in opposition to hardship, perplexity, sorrow, and 
the sight of things seeming to drift wrong. — T. Starr King. 

* " Hist, and Crit. View Spec. Philos. of Europe," Nineteenth Century, p. 288. 
See ?t\so post, chap, xxviii., the consideration of the transcendental and experiential 
theories of right and wrong; also chap, xlv., various philosophical theories of the 
mind's knowledge of God. 



Chapter XX. 
inception. 

Why did Jesus choose Capernaum for tk '' his 

Public Ministry, and how did the Associations of the Place 
affect his Discourses t 

Capernaum was a thriving village a little way from the head 
of the Sea of Galilee, where the western shore forms a small 
cape from which the view embraces the whole coast. The 
town was on the boundary between the territory of Philip and 
that of Herod Antipas, and accordingly had a custom-fa 
and a garrison. The "highway to the sea/' from Syria to the 
Mediterranean and Egypt, from Damascus to Ptolemais (Acre), 
ran through it, opening the markets of the coast to the rich 
yield of the neighboring farms, orchards, vineyards, and fisher- 
ies. Jesus would there have a better opportunity for inter- 
course with strangers than at Cana, Bet >r Chorazin; 
would there find a more busy and less luxurious people than 
at Tiberias, Herod's capital :' and possibly more docile than 
were his familiar neighbors at Nazareth. He made excur- 
sions to the neighboring villages, but appears to have become 
disgusted with his reception, and to have gone south, return- 
ing, however, occasionally. 

Galilee, though less than thirty miles square, had, according 
to Josephus, two hundred and forty towns and villages and 
fifteen fortresses. Allowing for exaggeration, still its popula- 
tion was very dense, and its soil was of wonderful fertili: 

The whole neighborhood of Capernaum is sacred to the me:: 
of Jesus. There were the vineyards, on the hill slopes, round which 
their lord planted a hedge, and in which he built a watch-tower and 
dug a wine-press. There were the sunny hills, on which the old 
wine had grown and the new was growing, for which the house- 
holder would take care to provide the new leather bottles. The 
plain of Genesareth was the enamelled meadow, on which, in spring, 
ten thousand lilies were robed in more than the glory of Solomon, 
and where, in winter, the grass was cast into the oven. It was on 



INCEPTION I03 

such pastures as those around that the shepherd left the ninety-and- 
nine, to seek in the mountains the one that was lost, and bring it 
back, when found, on his shoulders, rejoicing. The ravens, that have 
neither storehouse nor barn, daily sailed over from the cliffs of 
Arbela, to seek their food on the shore of the lake ; and from the 
same cliffs, from time to time, flew forth the hawks, to make the 
terrified hen gather her chickens under her wings. The orchards 
were there in which the fig-tree grew, on which the dresser of the 
vineyard in three years found no fruit, and in which the grain of 
mustard-seed grew into so great a tree that the birds of the air 
lodged in its branches. 

Across the lake rose the hills of Gaulonitis, which the idly busy 
rabbis watched for signs of the weather. A murky red seen above 
them in the morning was a text for these sky-prophets to predict 
"foul weather to-day, for the sky is red and lowering"; and it was 
when the sun sank red and glowing behind the hills in the west 
that the solemn gossips, returning from their many prayers in the 
synagogue, made sure that it would be "fair weather to-morrow." 
It was when the sea-cloud was seen driving over the hilltops from 
Ptolemais and Carmel that neighbors warned each other that a 
shower was coming ; and the clouds sailing north, toward Safed and 
Hermon, were the accepted earnest of coming heat. 

The daily business of Capernaum itself supplied many of the 
illustrations so frequently introduced into the discourses of Jesus. 
He might see in the bazaar of the town or on the street the rich 
travelling merchant, who exchanged a heavy load of Babylonian 
carpets for the one lustrous pearl that had, perhaps, found its way to 
the lake from distant Ceylon. Fishermen, publicans, and dressers 
of vineyards passed and repassed each moment. Over in Julias, the 
favorite town of the tetrarch Philip, below in Tiberias, at the court 
of Antipas, lived the magnates, who delighted to be called "gracious 
lords," and walked in silk robes. The young Salome lived in the one 
town, her mother, Herodias, in the other ; and the intercourse between 
the two courts could not have escaped the all-observing eye of Jesus 
as he moved about in Capernaum. — Dr. Cunningham Geikie {Life 
and Words of Christ, p. 342). 

At first, Jesus probably lived with his mother and brothers 
and the few disciples he had already gathered. On his return 
from his first passover journey to Jerusalem, he appears to have 
made his abode when in town in the house of Peter, who lived 
with his brother Andrew and his mother-in-law. 



Chapter XXI. 

INAUGURATION. 

In opening the Gospel Work, What were the Personal Habits of 
Jesus, and What the Order of Incidents, including the Choice 
of Disciples ? 

There was a judicious alternation of retirement and publicity, 
an adaptation of word and deed to circumstances. There con- 
tinued communion with his own spirit, the quiet gatherii 
of all the lessons of life and nature around, deep study of the 
thoughts and dispositions of men, silent mastery of the relig- 
ious ideas of the day, and a comprehensive knowledge of the 
religious parties of the people. He studied the Scriptures in 
the household or read them in the synagogues, until he ab- 
sorbed and knew them better than did the scribes and Phari- 
sees themselves. 

Many reverential reasoners are of the opinion that for a 
time he preached and practised the Essene doctrines: this, as 
he did not marry, advocated continence ''for the kingdom of 
heaven's sake," * and taught non-resistance, baptism, and the 
selling of all one's possessions for the sake of the poor. Be 
this as it may, there is no doubt that he unfolded himself to 
his country gradually. " There was a twilight before the dawn, 
a dawn before the morning, and a morning before the day.'' 
But everything was meanwhile concentrated upon fulfilment 
of the grand and strange resolve : " I will build up a state by 
the mere force of my will, without help from the kings of the 
world, without taking advantage of any of the secondary causes 
that unite men together, — unity of interest or speech or blood- 
relationship. I will make laws for my state which shall never 
be repealed, and I will defy all the powers of destruction that 
are at work in the world to destroy what I build." 

The Jewish theocracy had served its day. The new king- 
dom of God was to be a reign of holy love in the breast, 

* Matt, xix., 12. 



INAUGURATION 105 

instead of a worthless service of rites and forms. Until then, 
outward priesthoods, local temples, the slaying of sacrifices, 
pompous rites and ceremonial laws, had been deemed essen- 
tial. But the consecration of Jesus as the Messiah, not of the 
Jews alone, but of mankind, made the whole obsolete as incom- 
patible with a universal religion. That he appreciated the 
immeasurable difficulties and dangers that beset his way, and 
was stepping with commensurate circumspection, detracts noth- 
ing from the real, ineffable grandeur of his position. 

The precise order in which the incidents of the great work 
occurred cannot be satisfactorily drawn from the conflicting 
accounts. Dr. Strong* puts both the choosing of certain dis- 
ciples and the Cana wedding before the " visit to Capernaum," 
and the call of Matthew (the fourteenth incident) afterwards. 
Probably, Judas of Karioth, Judea, was not chosen until after 
the first passover visit to Jerusalem. Perhaps two or more 
had been with Jesus at his visit to John the Baptist. 

The list has sometimes been culled from Mark iii., Luke vi., 
and John i. as follows : Simon and Andrew Bar-Jona, John 
and James Bar-Zabdai, Thaddeus (or Lebbeus or Jude), Mat- 
thew (or Levi) and James Bar-Alpheus, Nathaniel Bar-Talmai, 
Philip, Simon (Zelotes), Thomas (or Didymus, " Twin," per- 
haps one of twin younger brothers of Jesus), a*nd Judas (of 
Karioth). Perhaps James Bar-Zabdai was cut off early and 
James Bar-Joseph took his place. It was doubtless impractica- 
ble to get a representative from each tribe. The preponder- 
ance of the evidence, however, is affirmative of a choice of 
precisely twelve. 

The sending of the seventy has been called " a dogmatic 
invention. As the twelve stand for the twelve tribes of Israel, 
so the seventy stand for the seventy nations of the world, as 
counted or imagined at that time. Luke, as the less Jewish 
Gospel, is not satisfied with a Jewish apostolate." 

* In Harper's Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature. 



Chapter XXII. 



EXPANSION. 



What Two Views concerning the Development of Christ's Char- 
acter and Mission t 

(i) The supernatural ; (2) The transitional. 

The first embraces two theories : either that he was always 
omniscient, and his opinions unchangeable ; or that he had a 
kind of omnipotence and omniscience which he so kept in 
abeyance as not to interfere with the conditions of his human 
nature. 

Jesus might be hungry, thirsty, tired, and mistaken, — for instance, 
in the fig-tree. To the inquiry, " If he was omniscient, must he not 
have been so unlike mankind as to make his life unnatural and his 
character useless as an example?" the answer is that, judging from 
the history, his knowledge was limited by the usual conditions of 
usual experience, of which, however, his own special birth formed 
part. The only exceptions seem to be the two or three occasions on 
which he was elevated to superhuman knowledge, in order to carry 
on his beneficent work toward individuals, — for instance, the woman 
of Samaria. And if the question be asked, " Must he not as divine 
have known all things ? " I answer these wearisome puzzles by 
another just as irrational: Being divine, cannot he be all things, 
and therefore limited in point of knowledge bv voluntary self-sur- 
render ? — Vicar T. W. Fowle [Reconciliation of Religion and Science, 
P- 354). 

Dr. Newman Smyth, in his chapter on "The Uniqueness of 
Jesus," remarks : — 

Though he grew to manhood in a quiet Israelitish home, no man 
ever thinks of calling him a child of Abraham. Though living all 
his life among his father's people, he never became a Hebrew of the 
Hebrews. Though inheriting the traditions of Israel, the Son of 
'David was known as the Son of Man. . . . The contrast between 
Jesus' character and the fixed Jewish type appears at once, when we 
view beside it the greatest of the prophets, who also came just before 
him, or the chief of the apostles who followed after him. — Old Faiths 
in New Light, p. 188. 



EXPANSION 107 

(1) The transitional view is that Jesus had a natural growth 
intellectually and spiritually; and that possibly, after his in- 
tellect had expanded above the superstitions of his time and 
country, he still contented himself with simply approximative 
expressions of truth. 

The real beauty of Christ's life is just that which is hid by the 
blind ascription of equal sanctity to all he did and said, — his growth. 
Slight as the authentic points are, they are points of fire. We see 
him steadily emerging from sectarian trammels and national preju- 
dices: the smoke of Jewish tradition — Gehenna, devils, angels — 
mingling with, but never mastering the ever-mounting flame of his 
thought. It is a Jewish Messiah he sees coming in clouds of glory; 
but the Messianic costume is thrown off, when, descended, the judge 
says naught of Jew or Gentile, but parts to right and left men as 
they have or have not fed the hungry and clothed the naked. The 
hereditary conventional beliefs in his mind decrease until they linger 
only as superficial garb of his truth : he never makes any prevailing 
error his main point. It seems to me that some liberals concede too 
much to that Medusa, superstition, which turns every thought and 
emotion of Christ to dogmatic stone, when they admit his responsi- 
bility for the demonology, the devil, the eternal hell, incidentally 
mentioned without denial in his teachings. Under compulsion to 
fulfil the role of the Messiah, the Christ of Christendom is made to 
give an original and divine sanction to the cosmological notions of 
his age, which he held as we hold the law of gravitation. 

The demonology, the great gulf fixed between heaven and hell were 
the best science of his age : the Darwins and Huxleys of his time, 
such as they were, believed them. He was not a dialectical or scientific 
sceptic engaged in questioning such things. In estimating a great 
man, we should surely look to that wherein he was unique, individual, 
exceeded his age and added to it. In raising to equal import 
Christ's mere hereditary mode of expression and the life that was in 
him, adoring alike body and raiment, the sects are really building 
as much upon the creed of Christ's crucifiers as on his own. Every 
scribe and Pharisee agreed with Christ about Gehenna and Satan. . . . 
What they did not believe was in a Father who sends his sunshine 
and rain on good and evil alike ; a Father we may deduce at length 
not likely at any time to rain fires of hell upon his children. To the 
man who believed in such a Father, there must not be attributed an 
equally conscious and thought out agreement with the logical results 
of the conventional cosmogony which was sometimes the inevitable 
costume of his thought. 

It is interesting to note how, from basing his opposition to falsities 
on the written Law, he more and more appeals to nature and reason. 
David's eating the shew-bread and man's superiority to the Sabbath 
are oddly connected for a time ; but, at length, his protest against the 
Sabbath is based simply upon unresting nature and human liberty. 

For his age and country, Christ was perhaps unique in his method 



T o8 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

of measuring usage and tradition by 'real principles. When he 
warned the youth to keep the commandments, and the voung man 
asks which, he does not blindly reply, " The whole ten, o( course M : 
he names only five from the decalogue, all the real and human ones, — 
names none of those that protect Jehovah. For the Sabbatarian com- 
mand, he substitutes, " Love thy neighbor as thyself." Instead of 
warning the youth against "graven images," which he is in no danger 
of worshipping, he touches his real idol, — his wealth ; and, instead of 
exhorting him to do the work of Moses' time, he calls him to the 
great task of his own, — to come out there into the street, stand by his 
side, and toil for the right. 

How far he carried this rationalism we cannot fully know; for his 
words come to us mingled with much that is irrational in his 
reporters. Nevertheless, to the careful eye, his pearl will not be con- 
ifused with the shell enclosing it. We know that it was a great 
far above any New Testament writer, which us those fine 

protests against prayer in public places, that relegation of the heart 
to the closet for its mystical communion with tl I one 

of those believers in popular marvels who report »uld have 

invented those exalted poetic interpretations of nature which bid us 
learn of the sparrow and of the lily, more glorious than Solomon in 
his splendor, and appealed to men to discern the signs of their 
own time, as for the weather they watched the morning red and 
glow of evening. It was no believer in a fictitious providence who 
rebuked the notion that those on whom the tower of Siloam fell were 
worse than others. And, even in the Fourth Gospel, we can trace 
back to him that wonderful saying, that he would not pray for his 
disciples, because God needs no prompting of his love; and also that 
lesson of humility taught by his washing the feet of the humble v, 
ingmen who followed him. These things represent the integr; 
a. great mind, — the mind of a thinker, a reasoner, a poet. . 

At one period, Christ says, "The scribes and Pharisees sat in 
Moses* seat : all things therefore whatsoever thev bid vou, do and 
keep; but do not ye after their works, for thev sav and do not." 
Here may be noticed the attitude of a youth in trans::: m ; 
another time he does what those occupants - it tell him not 

to do, and repudiates them on principle. They tell him to ke*p the 
Sabbath; but he — casting, no doubt, a look on ever active nature 
around him — replies, "My Father ceases not his work on the 
Sabbath, nor do I." 

At first, he evidently hoped to purify the ancient religion of his 
fathers from its later corruptions. In the ardor of this earlv aim, he 
may have made the violent attack on the tradesmen in the temple, 
ascribed to him. Before his attention was turned to the law itself, 
he attacked only the priests' hypocritical evasions thereof; for in- 
stance, their allowing a man to purchase an indulgence for not sup- 
porting — not honoring — his parents by paving a sum of money into 
the temple. But the time soon arrived when the conviction 
forced upon him, that the Jewish Church could not be s ied or 



EXPANSION I09 

expanded as to answer the needs of mankind or represent his ideal ; 
that, of all that edifice, not one stone should be left upon another. 

Not without pangs was the transition completed. Those who have 
known what it is to wrestle with doubts and misgivings, who have 
known what it is to break the ties of love and friendship in order to 
follow truth and right, can best hear all the pathos of that lamenta- 
tion that comes across the ages : " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kill- 
est the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often 
would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathers her chickens 
under her wings, and ye would not. Behold your house is left unto 
you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, 
till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." 
The next sentence is significant : '■ And Jesus went out, and departed 
from the temple." That was just such a heart-broken man abandon- 
ing finally rvnd forever the orthodox religion of his time as you, my 
friend, may have known in your pilgrimage. 

Possibly also his mind passed through several phases of belief con- 
cerning his being the Messiah of the Jewish hope. From time to time 
after the Maccabean war, agitators had appeared, assumed to be the 
Messiah, raised revolts, and perished. As in modern times it has 
been the characteristic of religious radicals — Fox, Wesley, Sweden- 
borg, Channing — eagerly to declare their faith to be the most genu- 
ine Christianity, so then was it felt necessary that a Jewish innovator 
should prove that he was setting up the only true and genuine Me*- 
siahship. This expected kingdom might be conceived variously, but 
it always involved the supremacy of the Jews over all other nations. 
Possibly a suggestion of claiming the Messiahship was thrust upon 
Christ by his friends, and afterward the Messianic idea was gradu- 
ally translated into the larger spirit of his mind, and merged in his final 
conception of a regenerate humanity. — Moncure D. Conway [Idols and 
Ideals % App* Essay -, p. 22, ff.). 

The outworn rite, the old abuse, 

The pious fraud transparent grown, 
The good held captive in the use 

Of wrong alone, — 
These wait their doom from that great law 

Which makes the past time serve to-day ; 
And fresher life the world shall draw 

From their decay ! 



Take heart, the master builds again ; 

A charmed life old goodness hath ; 
The tares may perish, but the grain 

Is not for death. 
God works in all things ; all obey 

His first propulsion from the night ; 
Wake thou and watch ! the world is gray 

With morning light ! 

John G. Whittier. 



Chapter XXIII. 

ADAPTATION. 

What Other Explanation of the Fact of Christ's Use of Ap- 
proximative Languag 

Adaptation of utterance to his hearers' minds. Every re- 
form imposes upon the reformer certain conditions to success. 
Christ's practice in this regard has been approved by the wise 
of all ages. Older than his era is the conservative maxim, 
not yet obsolete among radicals, politicians, and jurists : * 4 The 
beaten path is the safe path" (Via trita, via tuta). Reforms 
come not in hurricane downfalls. 

Men must be taught as if you taught them n 
And things unknown proposed as thin^ 

Dr. Matthew Arnold, in advocating concession to the use of 
certain expressions in the prayer-books or hymn-books, even 
when one's belief may not fully assent thereto, cites the prac- 
tice of Jesus, who, though knowing that his use of the familiar 
language of his day — the language of poetry — would occasion- 
ally cause immense misapprehension, yet felt that it was not 
by introducing a brand-new religious language and by parting 
with the old and cherished images that the popular reli 
could be transformed, but by keeping the old language and 
images, and as far as possible carrying into them the soul of 
the new Christian ideal.* He then asks : — 

When Jesus talked of the Son of Man coming in his glory with the 
holy angels, setting the good on his right hand and the bad on his 
left and sending away the bad into everlasting fire pre r the 

devil and his angels, was he speaking literal! mean 

that all this would actually happen ? Popular religion 
Yet very many religious people even now suppose that 
using the figures of Messianic judgment familiar to his hear* 
order to impress upon them his main point, — what g : and 

of practice did really tend' to salvation and what did not. And surely 

* As to Christ's allusion to Jonah, se 



ADAPTATION 1 1 1 

almost every one must perceive that when Jesus spoke to his disci- 
ples of their sitting on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, or 
of their drinking new wine with him in the kingdom of God, he was 
adopting their material images and beliefs, and was not speaking liter- 
ally. Yet their master's thus adopting their material images and 
beliefs could not but confirm the disciples in them. And so it did, 
and Christendom, too, after them ; yet in this way, apparently, Jesus 
chose to proceed. 

But some one may say that Jesus used this language because he 
himself shared the materialistic notions of his disciples about the 
kingdom of God, and thought that coming upon the clouds and 
sitting upon thrones and drinking wine would really occur in 
it, and was mistaken in thinking so. Manifestly, his disciples 
thought — even the wisest of them, and after their master's death as 
well as before it — that this kingdom was to be a sudden, miraculous, 
outward transformation of things, which was to come about very 
soon and in their own lifetime. Nevertheless, they themselves 
report Jesus as saying what is in direct contradiction to all this. 
They report him describing the kingdom of God as an inward change 
requiring to be spread over an immense time, and coming about 
by natural means and gradual growth, not suddenly, miraculously. 
Jesus compares it to a grain of mustard-seed or a handful of leaven. 
The world must first be evangelized, — no work of one generation, 
but of centuries and centuries; not until then should the end, the 
new world, come. 

True, the disciples also make Jesus speak as if he fancied this end 
to be as near as they did. But it is quite manifest that Jesus spoke 
to them at different times of two ends : one, the end of the Jewish 
state and nation, which any one who could discern the signs of that 
time might f/oresee; the other, the end of the world, the instatement 
of God's kingdom; — and that they confused the two ends together. 
Undeniably, therefore, Jesus saw things in a way very different from 
theirs, and much truer. And, if he uses their materializing language 
and imagery, then it cannot be because he shared their illusions. 
Nevertheless, he uses it. — Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 45. 

From a portion of this view, another eminent Free Religious 
writer dissents, deeming it likely that Jesus borrowed from 
Daniel the idea of a coming in the clouds of heaven ; that his 
favorite designation of himself as the " Son of Man " made this 
almost inevitable, once he had assumed the role of the Mes- 
siah : — 

Only this, however, is certain : that the Messianic self-conscious- 
ness of Jesus included the anticipation of his return to the earth after 
his death, to establish the kingdom of hea¥en. The criticism which 
endeavors to make it appear that the conceptions ascribed to Jesus 
here are entirely the reflection of the apostolic community is not 
thoroughly rational. It is necessary to ascribe these conceptions to 



112 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Jesus, in order to account for the hold they had upon the primitive 
Christian community.— John W. Chadwick [The Man Jesu', p. 160). 

Still, the Christian, primitive or cultured, in discriminating 
on means and manners and locating the line of candor close to 
courtesy, must recognize Paul's idea of Christ's method : " I 
am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save 
some." 

It may be a strange, deep question of science how our sun became 
established in the centre of his system, and reached that grandeur 
which marks him now, — eight great worlds, such as Earth, Mars, 
Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, moving ever around him and with him, held 
into being and harmony by his power, and adorned by his love; but, 
in spiritual directions, a similar scene appears, that of Christianity 
advancing and calling to her vast circle certain worlds of charity and 
brotherhood and purity and hope and beauty. In this large estimate 
of the scene, many of the variations of theologians, dead or still 
living, lose all their former significance, and a hundred names of 
worshippers blend into one worship, and a hundred ways of salvation 
meet in one path. On such a height, all vain janglings cease; and 
we see one God, one mediator, one human race, one worship; we 
hear one prayer, one hymn, and read one sublime creed, — u Fear 
God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." 
— David Swing* 



Chapter XXIV. 

ALLOCUTION. 

Where, When, and How were the Principal Discourses of 

Jesus delivered? 

He availed himself of every occasion that came in his way, 
especially of the admirable opportunities of the synagogue. 
His addresses and attached sayings have been preserved, col- 
lected, and handed down to us without any strict observance 
of time and place in their arrangement. The evangelists them- 
selves make very free with the time and place of the discourses 
in fitting them into their own framework. For instance, in the 
fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Matthew, we possess an 
inestimable collection of short sayings and more extended 
discourses, which the first evangelist (or perhaps to a great 
extent the apostle from whom his Gospel takes its name) had 
woven together ; * but they were really uttered at various times 
and under various circumstances, and have no connection with 
each other. 

Matthew, however, represents Jesus as having delivered the whole 
collection at once on a mountain. Hence, the name of " Sermon on 
the Mount" is given to this precious monument of the teaching of 
Jesus ; and the legend has fixed upon "the Horns of Chattin " as the 
place from which the sermon was delivered. Now, the evangelist 
had a special motive for fixing upon a mountain for this purpose. 
He intended to represent Jesus laying down the fundamental laws of 
the kingdom of heaven as the counterpart of Moses, who promulgated 
the constitution of the Old Covenant from Mount Sinai. Luke, how- 
ever, on the other hand, not wishing Jesus to be regarded as a second 
Moses, or another lawgiver, just as deliberately makes the Master 
deliver this discourse on a plain. 

The abruptness of the transitions is a noticeable feature. Probably 
many sayings which belong to the closing rather than the opening 
period of the ministry of Jesus have been put too early by the evan- 
gelists. . . . The Beatitudes may properly stand first as the express 

*Matt. v., i: sermon to the disciples; vii., 28, to multitudes \pchloi\ Perhaps 
the throng arrived after the disciples. 



114 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

image of his life and character ; yet they were probably uttered sub- 
sequently to his disciples privately, after persecution had come. 

Whatever was more fitting to say to Nicodemus than to less in- 
tellectual persons was no doubt repeated in that interview. This 
would sum up approximately in : It is not enough, Nicodemus, that 
you have examined my credentials, and that, approving them, you 
own me as a teacher carrying a commission from on high. You must 
accept deeper results of my mission than any you have yet thought 
of, and must give your mind and spirit to be translated into the 
region of a new and better life. — Dr. I. Hooykaas ( The Bible for 
Learner s, vol. iii., p. 141, ff.). 

Dr. Geikie, however, reconciles Matthew and Luke by sug- 
gesting that the " plain " was a terrace : — 

Tradition has chosen the hill known as the " Horns of Hattin," 
two horn-like heights rising sixty feet above the plain between them, 
two hours west of Tiberias, at the mouth of the gorge which opens 
past Magdala into the wild cliffs of Arbela, famous in the history of 
the Zealots as their hiding-place, and famous also for Herod's battles 
in mid-air at the mouths of their caves, by means of great cages filled 
with soldiers let down the precipices. It is greatly in favor of this 
site to find such a writer as Dean Stanley saying that the situation so 
strikingly coincides with the intimations of the gospel narrative as 
almost to force the inference that in this instance the eye of those 
who selected the spot was rightly guided. 

The plain on which the hill stands is easily accessible from the 
lake; and it is only a few minutes' walk from it to the summit, 
before reaching which a broad "level place" has to be crossed, 
exactly suited for the gathering of a multitude together. It was to 
this, apparently, that Jesus came down from one of the higher horns 
to address the people. Seated on some slightly elevated rock, — for 
the^ teacher always sat while he taught, — the people and the disciples 
sitting at his feet on the grass, the cloudless Syrian sky over them, 
the blue lake with its moving life on the one hand, and in the far 
north the grand form of Hermon glittering in the upper air, he began 
what is to us the Magna Charta of our faith, and to the hearers must 
have been the inauguration of the new kingdom of God. — Life 
Words of Christ, p. 418. 

A prominent characteristic of Christ's discourses is their 
parables. These were a most advantageous means of indoctri- 
nation. The images thus imprinted on the imagination, to- 
gether with the lessons they taught, fixed themselves without 
effort on the memory, and were passed from mouth to mouth : 
they will go down through the centuries, 

Must_ throb in after-throbs till Time itself 
Be laid in stillness, and the universe 
Quiver and breathe upon no mirror more. 



ALLOCUTION 115 

The dough standing to rise in the bread-trough illustrated the 
silent working of truth in society ; the seeds falling on different kinds 
of soil, the degrees of receptivity of the human soul; the bird falling 
dead from the air, the perpetual, universal providence of God ; the 
parent giving bread to his children at their meals, the influence of 
the Holy Spirit ; the lightning seen all around the sky, at once the 
coming of a universal religion: by such illustration, Jesus perpetually 
appealed to the common sense of his hearers in support of his teach- 
ing. He also appealed sometimes to their scriptures, and occasion- 
ally he met reasoning by reasoning. But most frequently he taught 
by this reference to common life, so recognizing the analogy between 
God's laws in nature, in society, and in the soul. — Dr. J. F Clarke 
(Common Sense in Religion, p. 12). 

Thomas Fuller says of the good woman, " She makes plain 
cloth to be velvet by her handsome wearing of it." So Jesus 
made the parable, which up to his time had been only moder- 
ately efficient, a weapon with which he accomplished wonders. 
And here it is not improper to introduce an indorsement of 
Christ's practice as to poetic (or simile) license from an unex- 
pected source : — 

The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth. 
For all beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of a face, and 
true proportions the beauty of architecture, -as true measure that of 
harmony and music. In poetry which is all fable, truth is still the 
perfection. — Earl A. A. C. Shaftsbury. 

All my poetry is the poetry of circumstance. It wholly owes its 
birth to the realities of life. — Goethe. 

Truth severe by fairy fiction dressed. — Thomas Gray. 

Fiction may be much more instructive than real history. — John 
Foster. 

The fainter lines are neglected, but the great characteristic features 
are imprinted on the mind forever. — Baron Macaulay. 

One notable feature is the reutterances. Thenceforth, Jesus 
appears habitually to have employed himself in those kinds of 
word and deed which, repeated in substance over and over 
again in a large number of places and before great multitudes 
of witnesses, were to constitute the main ground of his appeal 
to the conscience of the world and the first basis of the general 
belief in him, — the basis upon which all the rest was in due 
time to be built up. But, while he thus wrought from day to 
day and from place to place, he was also at times employed in 
sowing a seed which was to lie longer in the ground before the 
time of germination. 



Il6 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Sometimes, he set himself to sow seed in capable minds and willing 
hearts, like those of the apostles or like that of Xicodemus ; some- 
times, to let it fall apart from the common beat of the chosen people, 
and where it could not be choked by their peculiar prejudices, as 
with the woman of Samaria. But also in Jerusalem itself, at least 
by one series of discourses, he was pleased to state sufficiently, in 
the hearing both of the people and of their guides, the dignity and 
claims of his person ; so that the authentic declaration from his 
lips of the truths which were to be developed in apostolic teaching 
might accredit that teaching to minds that would otherwise have 
stumbled at the contrast, or would have been unable to fill the void 
between such doctrine posthumously preached and the common 
tenor of our Lord's words and acts as they are given in the Synoptical 
Gospels. Some portions of St. John's Gospel may be regarded as 
the golden link between the Sermon on the Mount'and the the 
of the Apostolic Epistles. — Hon. W. E. Gladstone (AV 
Homo, p. 92). 

The key-note of Christ's discour-e was self-abnegation. 
The Sermon on the Mount was an unfolding of that wide and 
deep word of John's message — " Repen out rejection of 

any light from the established traditional lore of the liste: 

The principle may be described according to the m which 

it is approached, as the worth of man or the lo 'an as 

man is called to and destined for the highest moral perfection, and 
as a consequence the purest blessediv the R 

the individual was of no importance ei :he great 

whole, as a citizen of Rome. In Israel, man had no rights, no hope, 
except as a member of the chosen >n of A 

Jesus, man as man had sacred and inalienable rip 
that nothing could transcend. And in the mir. 
brought all things straight into connection with God, this truth 
assumed this form : Man is bv nature -.able 

of bearing God's image, and is the objet: infinite affection. 

The Supreme Power, before which man bows in ad. 
has traced its indelible law upon his h 

man's inmost nature is akin to it. Man is akin to God. G- 
Father. And it is because man is so truly great that, as a 
being, he must trample down all th et her 

into the background, since it is too poor and worthless to t* 
ject of his care.— Prof. J. R. SeeUy ( I 

The chief potency of the words of K in the demon- 

stratum afforded by his example. It is the most hop 
redeeming fact in history that Christ, bv prefereno 
with the meanest of our race. Indeed/the poor al him 

more than the rich : their vices seemed to him : ous.l 

Injustice, cruelty, and oppression were more hateful to him| 
than vices of passion or improvidence. 



ALLOCUTION IVJ 

It was because the edict of universal love went forth to men 
whose hearts were in no cynical mood, but possessed with a spirit of 
devotion to a man, that words which at any other time, however 
grandly they might sound, would have been but words, penetrated 
so deeply, and along with the law of love the power of love was 
given. Therefore, also, the first Christians were enabled to dispense 
with philosophical phrases, and instead of saying that they loved the 
ideal of man in man, could simply say and feel that they loved Christ 
in every man. We have here the very kernel of the Christian moral 
scheme. 

Few of us sympathize originally and directly with this devotion ; 
few of us can perceive in human nature itself any merit sufficient to 
evoke it. But it is not so hard to love and venerate him who felt it. 
So vast a passion of love, a devotion so comprehensive, elevated, 
deliberate, and profound, has not elsewhere been in any degree ap- 
proached save by some of his imitators. And, as love provokes love, 
many have found it possible to conceive for Christ an attachment the 
closeness of which no words can describe, — a veneration so possess- 
ing and absorbing the man within them that they have said, " I live 
no more, but Christ lives in me." 

Now, such a feeling carries with it of necessity the feeling of love 
for all human beings. It matters no longer what quality men may 
exhibit : amiable or unamiable, as the brothers of Christ, as belong- 
ing to his sacred and consecrated kind, as the objects of his love in 
life and death, they must be dear to all to whom he is dear. And 
those who would for a moment know his heart and understand his 
life must begin by thinking of the whole race of man, and of each 
member of the race, with awful reverence and hope. — Prof, J, R. 
Sec ley {Ecce Homo, p. 165 [178]). 



Chapter XXV. 

VENERATION. 

Wherein and What the Regenerating 7< r of the in- 

doctrination of Faith in Christ and in the Mutuality or 
"Solidarity " of the Human Rai 

There are two facts, the converse of each other, — mutuality 
of blessing and mutuality of cursing. One is: — 

There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the pun- 
ishment alone : you can't isolate yourself, and say that the evil that is 
in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended 
each other as the air they breathe : evil spreads as necessarily as dis- 
ease. — George Eliot. 

As to the other, the existence of faith — of fidelity to an 
Unseen Power of Goodness — imports an i e of the ele- 

mental power of sympathy and emotion, with the single, unal- 
terable object of dying with Christ to the law of the flesh, to 
live with Christ to the law of the mind. 

Justice is often but a form of pedantry, mercy mere easiness of 
temper, courage a mere firmness of phvsical constitution; but, if 
these virtues are genuine, then they indicate not goodnes- 
but goodness considerably developed. A man may be potentially 
just or merciful, yet from defect of training he mav be actuallv 
neither. We want a test which shall admit all who have it in them 
to be good, whether their good qualities be trained ch a 

test is found in faith. He who, when goodness is impressivelv put 
before him, exhibits an instinctive loyalty to it, s rd to 

take its side, trusts himself to it,— such a man has faith, and the 
of the matter is in such a man. He may have habits , but 

the loyal and faithful instinct in him will place him above manv that 
practise virtue. He may be rude in thought and character, but he 
will unconsciously gravitate toward what is^ri^ht. Other virtues 
scarcely thrive without a fine natural organization and a happv train- 
ing. But the most neglected and ungifted of men mav make a begin- 
ning with faith. Other virtues want civilization, a certain amou 
knowledge, a few books; but, in half-brutal countenances, faith will 



VENERATION 119 

light up a glimmer of nobleness. The savage who can do little else 
can wonder and worship and enthusiastically obey. He who cannot 
know what is right can know that some one else knows, he who has 
no law may still have a master, he who is incapable of justice may be 
capable of fidelity, he who understands little may have his sins for- 
given because he loves much. 

Christ laid men under an immense obligation. He convinced 
them that he was a person of altogether transcendent greatness; 
one who needed nothing at their hands ; one whom it was impossible 
to benefit by conferring riches or fame or dominion upon him, and 
that, being so great, he had devoted himself of mere benevolence to 
their good. He showed them that for their sakes he lived a hard 
and laborious life, and exposed himself to the utmost malice of pow- 
erful men. They saw him hungry, though they believed him able to 
turn the stones into bread ; they saw his royal pretensions spurned, 
though they believed that he could in a moment take into his hand 
all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them ; they saw his 
life in danger ; they saw him at last expire in agonies, though they 
believed that, had he so willed it, no danger could harm him, and that, 
had he thrown himself from the topmost pinnacle of the temple, he 
would have been softly received in the arms of ministering angels. 
Witnessing his sufferings and convinced that they were voluntarily 
endured, men's hearts were touched ; and, pity for weakness blending 
strangely with wondering admiration of unlimited power, an agitation 
of gratitude, sympathy, and astonishment, such as nothing else could 
ever excite, sprang up in them ; and when, turning from his deeds to 
his words, they found this very self-denial which had guided his own 
life prescribed as the principle which should guide theirs, gratitude 
broke forth in joyful obedience, self-denial produced self-denial, and 
the law and law-giver together were enshrined in their utmost hearts 
for inseparable veneration. — Prof. J. R. Seeley (Ecce Homo, pp. 66 
and 50 [76 and 59]). 

This universal adaptation of the faith test is quaintly men- 
tioned by the old poet : — 

If bliss had lain in art or strength, 

None but the wise and strong had gained it ; 
Where now by Faith all arms are of a length, 
One size doth all conditions fit. 

And this "inseparable veneration" was to be the basis of a 
universal religion. Mankind were one family in the heart of 
Christ, and must become so in the hearts of his followers. A 
German poet and philosopher, after a long life of observation 
and reflection, testifies : — 

The Religion which depends on reverence [Ekrfurcht, honor done 
without fear] for what is above us we denominate the Ethnic ; it is 
the religion of the nations, and the first happy deliverance from a 
degrading fear : all Heathen religions, as we call them, are of this 



120 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

sort, whatsoever names they may bear. The Second Religion, which 
founds itself on reverence for what is around us, we denominate the 
Philosophical; for the philosopher stations himself in the middle, and 
must draw down to him all that is higher, and up to him all tha 
lower, and only h. this medium condition does he merit the title of 
Wise. Here, as he surveys with clear sight his relation to hiseqc 
and therefore to the whole human race, his relation likewise to all 
other earthly circumstances and arrangements nece> acciden- 

tal, he alone in a cosmic sense lives in Truth. But i have to 

speak of a Third Religion, grounded on reverence for what is be- 
neath us: this we name the Christian, as in the Christian rel;g 
such a temper is with most distinctness manifested: it is a last step 
to which mankind were fitted and destined to attain. Hut what a 
task was it, not only to be patient with the Earth, and let it lie be- 
neath us, we appealing to a higher birthplace, but also to recognize 
humility and poverty, mockery and despite, disgrace an -d- 

ness, suffering and death,— to recognize these thin 
Goethe ( Wilhelm Meister's Travels, chap, x., C 

Religion is the human mind standing in reverence before the infi- 
nite energy of the universe, asking to he lifted in: 
to inspiration. — Christian E. Luihardt. 

Religion is assent through conscience to God. — J 

And what say two leading American thinkers hereon 5 

As Humboldt says, "The finest fruit earth holds up t<> ker 

is a finished man." To ripen, lift, and educate a man is the nr 
Trade, law, learning, science, and religion are only the scaffold 
wherewith to build a man. Despotism looks down into the poor 
man's cradle, and knows it can crush resistance and curb ill-will. 
Democracy sees the ballot in that babv hand; and selri^ ds 

her put integrity on one side of those ice 

on the other, lest her own hearth be in peril. Tha: 
method of taking bonds of wealth and culture to share all their bless- 
ings with the humblest soul he gives to their keeping! The 
can should cherish as serene a faith as his fathers b -cad of 

seeking a coward safety by battening down the hatches and putting 
men back into chains, he should recognize that G m in 

this peril that he may work out a noble securitv \ titrating all 

moral forces to lift this weak, rotting, and danger . un- 

tight and health The fathers touched their h evel when, with 

stout-hearted and serene faith, thev trusted I to 

leave men with all the rights he gave them. Let us be of 

their blood and save this sheet-anchor of the ra 
irage,— Gods church, God's school, God's method of eentlv binding 
men into commonwealths, in order that thev ma- ; t into 

brothers.- Wendell Phillips ( The S 



VENERATION 121 

The other leading American utterance is in the concluding 
discourse of Dr. James Freeman Clarke's recent series on the 
" Ideas of Paul" : — 

Paul had an idea of the steady outward progress of the whole 
Christian community. All rested on one deep principle, — faith in 
Jesus as the Christ. It would not come — this growth — from science 
or philosophy, from conscience or reason, from circumstances or en- 
vironment : it would only come from faith in this divine ideal, — 
Christ, the fulness of the manifestation of God. 

Observe now how men seek and need ideals, in order to grow. 
Every man, who is making progress, does so because he is pursuing 
an ideal aim. Every one has some leader, master, some one who 
represents to his imagination the best thing he knows. Students in 
science have their masters, their ideal chiefs, — Humboldt or Tyndall, 
perhaps; students in philosophy theirs, — Plato, Aristotle, Stuart Mill; 
students in literature theirs, — Shakspere, Bacon, Emerson; ardent, 
aspiring politicians theirs. Amid the dangers of a democratic gov- 
ernment, what a blessing that we have in this country an ideal of 
perfect patriotism, of pure love of country, in our Washington ! He 
stands as an ideal of purity in public affairs, and so he is regarded by 
the world. So, for example, speaks Byron, — 

Where may the wearied eye repose 

When gazing on the great ? 
Where neither guilty glory glows, 

Nor despicable state, — 
Yes, one, — the first, the last, the best, — 
The Cincinnatus of the West, 

Whom envy dared not hate. 
Bequeathed the name of Washington 
To make men blush there was but one. 

So, also, Macaulay testifies, speaking of Hampden : " When the 
vices and ignorance which the old tyranny had generated threatened 
the new freedom with destruction, then it was that England missed 
that sobriety, self-command, perfect soundness of judgment, perfect 
rectitude of intention, to which the history of revolutions furnishes 
no parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Washington alone." 

What an immense disaster it would be to this nation to lose this 
ideal of patriotism. Suppose some destructive critic should succeed 
in convincing us that Washington, after all, was no better than other 
vulgar conquerors, — no patriot, but a self-seeker, a demagogue, a 
cunning partisan: could any greater misfortune than that befall our 
country ? Such a misfortune, only infinitely greater, would befall the 
human race, if it could be made to appear that Jesus was not the 
divine ideal, the perfect man, the image of the divine goodness, truth, 
and love. 

It was by faith in this ideal Jesus that Paul lived and worked. All 
his hope for human progress flowed from this faith. " Speaking the 
truth in love," said he, "let us grow up in all things into him who is 
our head, even Jesus Christ. Till we all come, in the oneness of 



122 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, into 
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." It was not any 
abstract philosophic truth which Paul trusted in as the source of hu- 
man progress, but truth made real in the life of Jesus; truth become 
a part of human experience ; truth shown to be possible by one great 
example. This is the difference between speculative truth, which 
only moves the reason, and living truth, which awakens the whole 
soul. — Boston Saturday Eveni)ig Gazette, May 21, 188 1. 

No man or woman of the humble- an really be strong, 

gentle, pure, and good, without the world being better for it, without 
somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that 

goodness. — Phillips Brooks. 

The foregoing allusion to Macaulay recalls his lay of Hora- 
tius, which recurred to General D. McCo g death 

at Kenesaw Mountain, as told by General Garfid 
dinner conversation : — 

"Why, they were men who went into battle inspired bv all the 
heroism of antiquity. They marched into the fight ' ltiades 

and Themistocles and all the heroes of history in the air above them. 
There was that glorious soldier, General I 

ing the heights of Kenesaw Mountain at the the 

summit was crowded with rebel troops; the 

the troops had to lift themselves up by the 1 he 

knew it was almost certain death. In a m the 

ascent, he was heard to utter, as if S] >ut in ca 

clear tones, those words from Macaulay 

Then outspoke brave Horatius, the 

"To every man upon thi 

And how can man die better 1 

For the ashes of his fathei 

And for the tender mother who dandle 

And for the wife who nurses his b.i 

The rough soldiers all around felt the full meaning of these wor 
and remembered them. A moment afterwai 
the heights, and in two minutes fell dead 

For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods. 

And now," said General Garfield, -could man die bel I have 

with which Garfield recited them.— 

And Garfield himself ! 

And here, too, lies reason for our treasuring the sum to wor- 
ship therein the thing signified,- the iir. :he 
torn banners in the rotundas of our capito 



VENERATION 1 23 

Brave battle-flags from wild war's bloody waves 
Dashed quivering back upon Time's echoing strand, 
To tell the tale of dauntless souls and true. 

Here will be recalled Carlyle's remark as to hero-worship:. 
"Religion, I find, stands upon it,— not paganism only, but far 
higher and truer religions, all religion hitherto known. Hero- 
worship, heart-felt, prostrate admiration, submission, burning,, 
boundless, for a noblest, godlike form of man, — is not that the 
germ of Christianity itself? The greatest of all heroes is one 
whom we do not name here. Let sacred silence meditate that 
•matter : you will find it the ultimate perfection of a principle 
extant throughout man's whole history on earth." Whereupon 
George McCrie says, " Christfanity stands not upon this as its 
mainstay : it stands upon the supernatural doctrines of justifi- 
cation through the blood of Christ and regeneration by the 
Holy Ghost."* And to a reviewer of this reviewer has this 
favorite predicate, " stands upon," suggested Seneca's apho- 
rism, " Religion worships God; superstition profanes that 
worship." All of which recalls the more modern maxim, 
"Thou holdest not the root, but the root thee." 

But no one will be disposed to deny that a glorious company 
of martyrs reflect praise on what is divinest in man : and this, 
too, outside the list given by the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, of them that wrought righteousness through fidelity 
to conviction of an unseen power. Time will fail me, if I tell 
of Gideon, Socrates, Leonidas, the Roman sentinel at Pompeii's 
gate, Winkelreid, Gustav Adolphus, Latimer, Raleigh, Maynard, 
John Brown, and so forth. 

We may admit that the reverence paid to them in former days was 
unreasonable and excessive ; that credulity and ignorance have, in 
many instances, falsified the actions imputed to them ; that enthusi- 
asm has magnified their numbers beyond all belief ; that, when the 
communion with martyrs was associated with the presence of their 
material remains, the passion for relics led to a thousand abuses, and 
the belief in their intercession to a thousand superstitions. But why, 
in uprooting the false, uproot also the beautiful and the true ? Surely, 
it is a thing not to be set aside or forgotten, that generous men and 
meek women, strong in the strength and elevated by the sacrifice of 
a Redeemer, did suffer, did endure, did triumph for the truth's sake, 
did leave us an example which ought to make our hearts glow within 
us in admiration and gratitude. — Anna Murphy Jameson [Sacred and 
Legendary Art). 

* The Religion of our Literature > p. 64. 



124 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

A " cloud of witnesses " indeed, recalling and supplementing 
the familiar " Proposition I." of Archbishop William Pal 
dences : " Many professing to have been the original witnesses 
of Christ's miracles, crucifixion, and resurrection, passed their 
lives in labors, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in 
attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in 
consequence of their belief in the truth of those accounts.'' 
Whether or not we partially dissent from both u I." and M II.," 
we must assent to what underlies, — call it, if yon please, the 
sentiment of the ages : — 



"My will, not thine, be done," turns Paradise into a desert. " Thy 
will, not mine, be done." turns the desert into a Paradise, and makes 
Gethsemane the gate of heaven. — Ptimond de Prc'ssc^ 

Thy native home is where 
Christ spirit breathes a holier air, 
Where Christ-like faith i <;eek 

What truth or conscience freely speak, 
Where Christ-like love delights to span 
The rents that sever man from m.i: 
Where round God's thron. nes stand, 

There, Christian, is thy Fatherland. 
_ .„ Dean A. P. Si 

Still must we apostrophize our ideals : — 

Angels of growth I 
Did ye descend, what were ye more than I ? . . 
Wait there,— wait and invite me \s mb; 

For, see, I come ! — but slow, but s 
Yet ever as your chime, 
Soft and sublime, 

Lifts at my feet, they move, they go 
Up the great stair of time. 



• 



We have not wings, we cannot - 
But we have feet to scale and climb 

By slow degrees, by more and more, 
The cloudy summits of our time. 






Henry H'. Loh^ 



Chapter XXVI. 



EVOLUTION. 



What is meant in the Beatitudes by the "Kingdom of 
Heaven" and What the Progress of its Development t 

The dominion of the higher in human character, attained by 
individual conformity of conduct to the law of love, through an 
evolution wherein the morally, intellectually, and religiously 
fittest — the permanently strongest — survives the mere ephem- 
erally strongest. The weak — the temporarily weak — shall 
ultimately inherit the earth. Mammoth and megalosaurus, 
mere moving mountains of monster force, have perished from 
che planet. The lions have decreased before the lambs. 
Man, weakest of all animals at birth, has been awarded the 
sceptre of the world, because he was fittest, through his power 
to love, to consider, to deny himself for others. 

It is the very evangel of our time that knowledge is shadowing out 
the moral essence of the world. It has shown mere physical power 
steadily decreasing, and the power of thought and love increasing; 
and it has thus discovered for the humane a new basis for their 
hope, a new spur for their effort. Ferocity is a weakness; fanaticism 
is feebleness; selfishness is suicidal. Turkey feels it; Spain feels it; 
Rome is learning it. Love, justice, knowledge, lead the world, and 
human hearts may now sing unto their Lord a new song. A new 
song! and yet that which is now a matter of knowledge was of old 
fek out by the intuition and faith of great hearts. 

It was felt out by Christ, who estimated things by their sentiment, 
— by their spirit, — and not by their outward size and seeming 
strength. He anticipated the whole story of moral evolution. To 
the lowly, he said, is given the kingdom of heaven : humility shall 
inherit the earth. He had faith that ideas could level the loftiest 
temples, stone by stone, and perfect faith move mountains. He 
could see a vast property in a widow's mite, and emptiness in the 
costliest offering. He valued the sympathy of a woman whom 
others scorned more than the gifts of the proud. A cup of cold 
water given for truth's sake carried with it a divine virtue. He 
looked not to the thing done, whether it were large or little, but to 



126 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

the heart and worth put into it : nothing could be large that had no 
soul in it, nothing small which had in it one spark of love and truth. 

Is there no philosophy in all this ? Why, modern knowledge has 
almost abolished distinctions of great and small. It reads one law in 
the rounding of a world or a tear ; it sees in the smallest improve- 
ment of plant or animal the essence of a new kingdom. It discovers 
the power of leasts. . . . When all the world is smiting the unpopular 
cause, what is implied, if one approaches with hand extended, not to 
smite, but to clasp and bless ? Out of all, that one hand alone repre- 
sents the divine life and purpose of nature ; that one alone acts for no 
selfish end, is guided by no low interest, bribed by no mean desire, 
not terrified by public odium. That heart which brings its love and 
devotion to the true and right has brought with it the might of every 
law, — the forces of destiny. When Dr. Johnson was once loudly 
defending some strange principle of his against a company of gain- 
sayers, all opposed him, it seemed. One man present alone said to 
him, " I believe you are right." The man who said that was John 
Wesley. Johnson lowered his voice and said, M To have convinced 
such a man as you is all I can desire." With the one best man on 
his side, Johnson felt he was in the majority. 

That cause is not weak which has won the faith of the wise and 
the love of the pure in heart, though the wise be few and poor, and 
the lovers able to give but a cup of cold water. Its star is in the east, 
its day will not recede: it moves with steadfast planets in their 
courses. — Moncure D. Conway {Idols and Ideals > p. 95). 

This incident of Dr. Johnson may have suggested to Bea- 
consfield the remark, " I prefer to belong to the intellectual 
rather than to the numerical majority." 

The simile of the mustard-seed and the parable of the sower 
suggest yet another illustration of this " moral evolution " : — 

The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, 
and you reap a habit ; sow a habit, and you reap a character ; sow a 
character, and you reap a destiny. — George D. Boardman. 

And not one destiny merely. It is declared in the M Papyrus 
Prisse " (found, says Mrs. L. M. Child, in a very ancient Egyp- 
tian tomb, and supposed to be the oldest writing in the world, 
2000 B.C.) that " what a man has to do is to teach his chil- 
dren wisdom. After he has finished the lot of man, their duty 
consists in going up the ladder which he has set for them. , ' 

Mr. Conway's remark that nothing could be small, etc., re- 
calls that of Michael Angelo, " Trifles make perfection, but per- 
fection is no trifle." 

Recently, it was a bold thing to say that conduct was three-fourths 
of life. It is beginning to be seen that it is all of life,— not doing 
simply, but knowing and being. Never before have men been so con- 



EVOLUTION 127 

scious that every study and every art ultimates in this. " The inven- 
tion of new crimes in politics," as it has been called, — what is it but 
a perception of the higher law ? Political economy is seen to be not 
a national, but an international question ; and the solution of its prob- 
lems lies in the translation of its terms into the language not of local, 
but of human interests. How all literature is analyzed for its light on 
moral questions ! Fiction fails to interest us, if it does not involve 
the situations, perils, victories of the moral sense. Theology is but 
the tragedy of conscience told in rhetoric. Art must awaken the 
sense of universal relation. And science, tracing the process of crea- 
tion from atom to orb, from monad to man, consciously or uncon- 
sciously pours all its treasures, gives all the force of its infinite facts, 
to establish the authority of the moral law. — J. C. Learned {Saratoga 
Sermon, 1882). 

In the gradual establishment of dominion of the higher self, 
two lines of tendency have been noted as affecting the harmo- 
nious expansion of all the powers which make the beauty and 
worth of human nature. Two individuals or two nations, 
placed in different circumstances, would have diverse views of 
the relative importance and value of reason as a guide and 
some other authority as the controller of conduct, whence 
would result the usurpation of the function of one faculty by 
the over-development of another. 

At the bottom of both the Greek and the Hebrew notion is the 
desire, native in man, for reason and the will of God, the feeling 
after the universal order, — in a word, the love of God. But while 
Hebraism seizes upon certain plain,' capital intimations of the univer- 
sal order, and rivets itself, one may say, with unequalled grandeur of 
earnestness and intensity on the study and observance of them, the 
bent of Hellenism is to follow with flexible activity the whole play of 
the universal order, to be apprehensive of missing any part of it, of 
sacrificing one part to another, to slip away from resting in this or 
that intimation of it, however capital. An unclouded clearness of 
mind, an unimpeded play of thought, is what this bent drives at. The 
governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness ; that of 
Hebraism, strictness of conscience. 

Christianity changed nothing in this essential bent of Hebraism to 
set doing above knowing. Self-conquest, self-devotion, the following 
not our own individual will, but the will of God, — obedience, — is the 
fundamental idea of this form, also of the discipline to which we have 
attached the general name of Hebraism. Only as the old law and 
the network of prescriptions with which it enveloped human life 
were evidently a motive power not driving and searching enough to 
produce the result aimed at, — patient continuance in well-doing, 
self-conquest, — Christianity substituted for them boundless devo- 
tion to that inspiring and affecting pattern of self-conquest offered 
by Christ ; and by the new motive power, of which the essence was 



128 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

this, though the love and admiration of Christian Churches have for 
centuries been employed in varying, amplifying, and adorning the 
plain description of it, Christianity, as St. Paul truly says, "establishes 
the law," and, in the strength of the ampler power which she has 
thus supplied to fulfil it, has accomplished the miracles we all see of 
her history. — Dr. Matthew Arnold {Cultur 

And here may be noted another feature in the philosophy of 
the progress of Christianity: — 

The mighty change which Christ achieved in the whole frame and 
attitude of the human mind with respect to divine thi: ;rans- 

mitted from age to age, but not by effort and agony like his, or like 
the subordinate but kindred agency of ti '.n by 

him to co-operate in the great revolution. S deea, 

both sustained and developed by the great 
and zeal of individuals, and by 
the main, it passed on from age to age by I 
unconscious influences. As the ag< 
than the social weight of Christianity rap: 

no unnatural process, came to rely more and m lence 

afforded by the simple prevalence of the religion in the 
was in truth a very great one; less an<! 
original investigation reaching upward t«. the 
adhesion of the civil power, the weight 
mass of Christian institutions, the general 

principles derived from the Scripture, that \ least 

an historic Christianity which, after a long, . 
pervades and scents the whole atmosphere 
in ordinary times seem to the mass of men 
cient that to seek for others would be a 

there be unreason in this blind reliance, unrea- 

son is shown when the period of re imes.— 

stone (Review of Ecce J/o/no, p. 1 1 ; 

According therewith comes an eloquent answer to the in- 
quiry, the peroration of the conclui 
Clarke's series on the Ideas of Paul . — 

In an age full of tendencies .ism. and vet full of the 

spirit of enterprise and progress, what is need< 

this faith in a divine spirit, not miraculous and a 

an ocean of love, in which all are bon 

into every heart and mind which opens to re 

is full of intellectual activity, what better than to add tl 

and hope, the sight of a divine future ? In an 

philanthropy, what is needed but a he. 

earthly sympathy, a divine impulse to be 

charity? In an age when this life is growing happier, when the old 



EVOLUTION 129 

wrongs and abuses are disappearing, what is more needed than the 
sight of immortality, of the world to come, a continuation of all that 
is best in this, a place of reunion of loving hearts, of greater peace 
and joy, where there shall be higher tastes, more generous love, 
keener insight, and where we shall see and know more of the great 
Master, the dear Friend, Jesus Christ? These are the ideas of Paul. 
Can we find any better? — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, May 21, 
1881. 

I would give nothing for a young man who did not begin life with 
an enthusiasm of some kind : it shows at least that he had faith in 
something good, lofty, and generous from his own stand-point. — 
George L. Le Clerc, Comte de Buffon. 

Morality is but the vestibule of religion. — Dr. E. H. Chapin. 

One shall not say : Every fall is a fall upward, and I will fall as 
much as I please. On the contrary, we read everywhere the doom of 
the shiftless, the disobedient, and the frivolous. The work of God 
goes on : the lines of right and truth become with each age plainer ; 
the pressure toward just and pure living is heavier to fight against ; 
and history is a record of the ruin, in some shape, of every individual, 
dynasty, trade, party, or nation which persisted in withstanding the 
progress of good. — Charles F. Dole {Sermon on Ezek. xxi., 27). 

Here patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw, 
Pledged to Religion, Liberty, and Law. 

Joseph Story. 

Another phase of this topic will be incidentally considered 
in the next two chapters. 



Chapter XXVII. 



INDOCTRINATION. 

What is the most Important Characteristic of the Sermon on 
the Mount, and What the First Four Precepts against Self- 
ishness f 

Its concreteness. This has been remarked by thinkers of 
every denomination. Witness widely indorsed aphorisms : — 

Christianity, which is always true to the heart, knows no abstract 
virtues, but virtues resulting from our wants, and useful to all. — 
Francois F. A., Vicomte de Chateaubriand. 

Do the duty that lies nearest to thee. — Goethe. 

All bow to Virtue, and then walk away. — J. De Finod. 

Aim above morality. Be not simply good. Be good for some- 
thing. — H. D. Thoreau. 

What we need most is not so much to realize the ideal as to ideal- 
ize the real. — Dr. F. H. Hedge. 

How unlike those old scholastics that were forever busily idle 
over such worthless abstract questionings as u What's Matter ? " 
" How many million angels can dance on a needle's point ? " — Dr. 
Marcellus A. Her rick. 

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. What 
is the soul ? It is immaterial. — Thomas Hood. 

The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding 
facts of consciousness is unthinkable. — John Tyndall. 

What I object to in Scotch philosophers in general is that they 
reason upon man as they would upon a divinity, they pursue truth 
without caring if it be useful truth. — Sydney Smith. 

The negative precept of the Grecian sage, and of the must human 
of the rabbis,* Jesus makes the golden rule of the world. . . .The 

*In the sayings of Hillel, Dean Stanley hears "faint accents of a generous and 
universal theology" {The Jewish Church, iii., p. 507). 



INDOCTRINATION I3I 

philosophers brought much beaten oil ; but Jesus, by the power of his 
spirit, converted the oil into light.*. . . In him was Yea.f This un- 
broken and undoubting " Yea" of Jesus' seif-consciousness manifests 
itself throughout his teaching. His doctrine is never a question and 
a weary doubt. — Dr. Newman Smyth {Old Faiths i?t New Light> 
pp. 199, 217). 

Having considered the manner, etc., of Christ's teaching,^ 
it in part remains to consider the matter thereof. This em- 
braces two themes : (i) Reverence and (2) Love. The for- 
mer has just been considered. § Of the latter, two interacting 
phases have already been predicated : (1) the subjective phase, 
or a certain condition of the soul induced by introspection and 
self-renunciation ; (2) the objective phase, or a certain conduct 
of life in all the various relations of each to other and to the 
community. The conformity of this conduct to certain rules of 
natural justice laid down by Moses, Confucius, Socrates, Jesus, 
and ethical writers ancient and modern, constitutes morality. 
Religion has sometimes been defined to be morality affected 
by emotion. Thus, when Cicero says, " Hold off from sensu- 
ality ; for, if you have given yourself up to it, you will find 
yourself unable to think of anything else," this is morality. 
But when Jesus says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
they shall see God," this is religion. But, as has been well 
remarked, emotion has no value in the Christian system, save 
as it stands connected with the right conduct as cause thereof. 

Emotion is the bud, not the flower ; and never is it of value until it 
expands into a flower. Every religious sentiment, every act of devo- 
tion which does not produce a corresponding elevation of life, is 
worse than useless : it is absolutely pernicious, because it ministers 
to self-deception, and tends to lower the line of personal morals. — 
W. II H. Murray. 

The world is beginning to apprehend that, after all our disputes 
and discussions upon dogmatic Christianity, religion consists of love 
to God and love to man, and has its final result and grand consum- 
mation in character. — Dr. J. G. Holland. 

The world wants the gold standard of righteousness rather than 
the fictitious and fluctuating paper currency of creeds. — Rush R. 
Shippen. 

Ritual does not produce religion, but religion produces ritual. — 
Dr. James F. Clarke. 

* See Neander's thorough discussion of " The Relation of the Hellenic to Chris- 
tian Ethics," Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen. 
t II. Cor. i., 19. % Ante, chap. xxiv. 

§ Directly in chap. xxv. and incidentally in chap. xi. 



I32 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

It is possible for a man to stand high in the Church, to obtain pre- 
ferment and honor in it, on account of his zeal and success as an 
ecclesiastical propagandist, and yet not be a follower of Christ. It 
is time men learned to discern between the Christian spirit and the 
ecclesiastical spirit. — Anon. ( The Interior). 

The whole business of religion is not merely to insure a man 
against fire in the other world, but to create an insurable interest in 
him. — Henry W. Beecher {Response at the Herbert Spencer Dinner). 

It is not proposed here to consider at any length the trite 
points of Christ's law of love, but to advert to some features 
that he therein emphasized that have not always received the 
attention requisite to the symmetry of culture already men- 
tioned in considering Harmonization, etc.* 

The Beatitudes, since they relate directly and explicitly to 
condition, and only generally to conduct, would perhaps more 
appropriately form the peroration than the introduction of the 
Sermon on the Mount, and were probably so placed by Jesus ; 
and no doubt they were more or less repeated by him in his 
private farewell discourses with his disciples. They would, 
however, form no inapt premonition to fortify the disciples' 
minds against what must be encountered in their southward 
journey. The watchword of the Beatitudes is the kingdom 
of heaven. 

Oh, what a theme ! How it brings back voices forevermore 
silent! Nay, "he being dead yet speaketh/' And how the 
testimony of the long line of faithful monitors to whom any of 
us have listened concur hereon, — Catholic or Protestant, or- 
thodox or other! Three decades ago, the writer listened lov- 
ingly to a venerable Methodist clergyman f who with earnest 
persuasiveness set forth the conditions of admission into this 
kingdom. A few days ago, he heard a young Unitarian cle 
man set forth the same conditions with the same simple earnest- 
ness, and quoting the same Scriptures. Each was informally 
addressing a small Bible-circle of honest truth-seekers. The 
latter said : — 

To John the Baptist, the kingdom of heaven was a new order of 
things external ; to Jesus, it was a new state of the soul. One might 
be, said Jesus, very little therein, and yet be greater than John. Paul 
gloried only in Christ's ideal. "The kingdom of God is within vou." 
The conditions of entering the state were: (i) Humility. A 'little 
child would be greatest. (2) Sincerity. Pharisaic righteousness 

* A nte, chap. xvii. 

t The late Rev. Benjamin Burnham, of Groton., Vt. 



INDOCTRINATION I33 

would avail nothing. (3) Earnestness. " There is no man that hath 
left house or wife or brethren or parents or children for the kingdom 
of God's sake who shall not receive manifold more in this time, and, 
in the world tu come, eternal life." (4) Gradual Growth. A mus- 
tard-seed planted in cherishing soil is a good emblem of the gradual 
growth and marvellous development of this kingdom in the heart and 
in the world. (5) A new principle. One must be born anew, said 
Jesus to Nicodemus. (6) A present principle. It is not merely 
future and afar off. " This is life eternal, that they should know thee, 
the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus 
Christ." And, to know Christ, we must know experientially what 
is declared in the Beatitudes promote the kingdom of God in the 
heart. Well, if one hath felt sorrow, — been really "acquainted with 
grief," — one must have had self-examination until the inmost soul 
plainly sees and is thoroughly sick of the unrest that comes of 
slavery to the lower nature, is famishing with feeding on husks, 
hungers and thirsts after righteousness, renounces all base allegiance. 
— y. Frederick Button (Hawes Place Church, South Boston). 

Ah, sorrow! "The saddest thing under the sky," exclaimed 
the Countess de Gasparin, "is a soul incapable of sadness." 
And not individually alone do we verify these principles. 
u Nations," declares Mazzini, " are educated through suffering, 
mankind is purified through sorrow. The power of creating 
obstacles to progress is human and partial. Omnipotence is 
with the ages." To nations no less than to individuals applies 
the quaint aphorism of George Herbert, " Prosperity lets go 
the bridle." And, as to pride and humility, the proverbial 
philosophy of all peoples is an infinite confirmation of that of 
the Hebrew sages of the era of David and Solomon. 

To be able under all circumstances to practise five things consti- 
tutes perfect virtue. These five things are gravity, generosity of soul, 
sincerity, earnestness, and kindness. — Confucius. 

Of the precepts to love there stand prominent directions to 
cultivate : — 

(1) The kindness of imparting knowledge. Let your light 
shine by word and by deed, and thereby draw folks to follow 
and glorify the Divine. What though it bring you envy, mis- 
representation, unpopularity, discomfort, ostracism ? There's 
a beatitude in it. Only thus can the human family progress 
upward. As to all things, therefore, whatsoever you (imagining 
yourself in the place of one ignorant, narrow, conceited, and 
Pharisaical) would be admonished and instructed in, admonish 
and instruct. 

(2) The kindness of reconciliation. Of course there can be 
no kingdom of heaven — no dominion of the higher — so long 



I 3 4 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

as the ciuel and malevolent lower is predominating. What 
though patience under a wrong be difficult ? There's a beati- 
tudeln it. Only thus can the human family progress upward. 
As to all things, therefore, whatsoever you, if having tres- 
passed or been spiteful, would that the wronged person should 
do unto you by way of restitution or forgiveness, do you even 
so unto him or her. " Love is the loadstone of love." 

Good will, like a good name, is got by many actions, and lost by 

one. — Baron Francis Jeffrey. 

To persevere in one's duty and to be silent is the first answer to 
calumny. — George Washington. 

I have never seen anything in the world worth getting angry about. 
— Henry J. Raymond. 

(3) The kindness of promoting chastity. The procrea 
instinct is a necessary, a beneficent one. "The preservation 
of the species was a point of such necessity that nature has 
secured it at all hazards by immensely overloading the 
at the risk of perpetiu ime and disorder."* But of 

course there can be no kingdom of heaven — no dominion of 
the higher, the home sacrament — so Ion. e base, the 

brutish, unrestrained lower is obtruding, usurpi dominat- 

ing. Just outside of Jerusalem burns the off enna. 

Would it not be fool- hardiness, insanity, ma«^ 
propensity put and keep you in Gehenna ? The rather have no 
mind or body at all. Amputation and cauterization are better 
than blood-poisoning: and prevention is better than amputa 
What though self-continence be sometimes ri 
be easy enough after you have habitually reined in your imagi- 
nation, unless you are hopelessly insane. When un I was 
David's gaze from Bathsheba, then unaverted was the as 
sination of Uriah. There's a beatitude in purity and .chival- 
rous honor. Only thus can the human family progress up 
As to all things, therefore, whatsoever you, if happv in 
possession of wife, daughter or sister, husband, son or" brother, 
would that another should do (or refrain from) to promote that 
happiness, do you yourself do (or refrain from). This is the 
scope of the seventh commandment, this the 
Nathan's parable. 

He who indulges sensual passions is like a person who ru: 
the wind with a lighted torch in his hand. Foolish mar 



*R. W. Emerson 



INDOCTRINATION 135 

not let go the blazing torch, he must needs have the pain of a burnt 
hand. Just so it is with respect to the poison of lust, anger, covet- 
ousness, and envy. ... Is a woman old ? Regard her as your mother. 
Is she of honorable station ? Regard her as your sister. Is she of 
small account ? Regard her as your younger sister. Is she a child ? 
Treat her reverently. — Buddha Saky a. 

The man who tells me an indelicate story does me an injury. — 
James T. Fields. 

Immodest words admit of no defence, 
For want of decency is want of sense. 

IV. Dillon, Earl of Roscommon. 

It is one of the heaviest penalties of wrong thinking and of wrong 
living that they blur, if they do not obliterate, the very perception of 
good and evil. — Mary Clemmer. 

What troubles the man is a confusion of the head arising from cor- 
ruption of the heart. — Robert Btims. 

John Milton explained the alleged precept of Christ concern- 
ing divorce to refer solely to what was really asked of him as he 
knew the matter to lie in the mind of his questioners, — namely, 
whether a man might put away a wife who adhered to him 
and discharged her duties as wife ; and he said that for no 
cause but for her adultery (which might be committed while 
she still discharged her duties directly to her husband) could 
she be rightfully divorced, leaving entirely out of contempla- 
tion the case of one who refused to conduct as wife to her hus- 
band. "A peculiar and inferior precept must not be expounded 
against the general and supreme rule of charity." " By so strict 
a sentence against divorce, Christ meant through counter sway 
of restraint to curb the wild exorbitance of over-weening 
rabbis almost into the other extreme, as when we bow things 
the contrary way to make them come to their natural straight- 
ness." * 

Paul's advice f — to let the unbelieving husband depart, etc. 
— has been explained to mean : She that will not dwell with 
her husband is not put away by him, but goes herself. Refusal 
to be a meet help, open misdemeanors resulting in incurable 
impotency, etc., unfit her to be by the higher law esteemed a 
wife. And this appears to be the view of enlightened legisla- 
tors and jurists generally. Thus much for the beatitude of 
chastity: the curse inevitable upon unchastity needs no 
comment. 

* The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Prose Works, vol. i., book ii., 
chap. i. 

1 1. Cor. vii., 15. 



I3 6 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives. 

Base love good women to base loving drives. 

If men loved larger, larger were our lives ; 

And woed they nobler, won they nobler wives. Sidney La 

To lead sweet lives of purest chas: 
To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
And worship her by years of noble deeds 
Until they won her; for indeed I k 
Of no more subtle master under he 
Than is the maiden passion for a maid, 
Not only to keep down the base in man, 
But to teach high thoughts and amiable words, 
And courtliness and the desire of fame, 
And love of truth, and all that makes a man. 

Alfred Tennyton. 
The saddest thing that can befall a soul 
Is when it loses faith in God and Woman. 
Lost I those gems, 

Though the world's throne stood empty in my path, 
I would go wandering back into my childhood, 
Searching for them with I 

miih. 
Woman ! with that word, 
Life's dearest hopes and memories come ; 
Truth, beauty, love, in her 
And earth's lost paradise restored 
In the green bower of home. 

A guardian angel o'er his life • 

Doubling his pleasure and hia Hng. 

Samuel K 
O woman ! lovely woman ! nature made thee 
, To temper man ; we had been brutes without 

Angels are painted fair, to look like 
There's in you all that we believe — 

Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, 
Eternal joy, and e\x nth. Tk 'tn is < \':r.jy. 

Love is never lasting which flames before it b Ftltham. 

A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is 
her world. . . . She sends forth her sympathies on adventure, she em- 
barks her whole soul in the traffic of affection, and, if shi] 
her case is hopeless, — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart. — 
ton Irving. 

(4) The kindness of simple manners. Superfluous assevera- 
tions are the product either of vanity or of mental indolence. 
If, instead of clear and simple expressions of afiirmati* 
denial, one resorts to needless appeals to what should be kept 
sacred from the familiarity that breeds contempt, half the I 
fits of social converse are undermined and neutralized. Of 
course, there can be no kingdom of heaven — no dominion of 
the higher, the decent — so long as the indecent and profane 
predominate in speech or gesture. Even as to that whose end 
is to hold the mirror up to nature, there are tacit canons of 



INDOCTRINATION 137 

reverence. What though it be hard sometimes for an unfort- 
unately bred person to refrain from uttering hot, incisive 
epithets, — "exclamations that savor more of strength than 
righteousness," — or incongruous bombast, and from listening 
to inane, sensational trash, instead of refined literature and 
unassuming communication. There's a beatitude in the con- 
sciousness of not being an intellectual sluggard, an obliquitous 
bore, or the swaggering fool portrayed in the proverbs cher- 
ished in every sensible person's mind. As to all things, there- 
fore, whatsoever ye would that another in his or her talk or 
manners to yourself or to your friend, pupil, son, or daughter, 
should refrain from in perjury, profanity, vulgarity, clownishness, 
solecism, unintelligibility, innuendo, importunity, or hoggishness, 
therefrom yourself refrain. This is the scope of every seer's 
inspired words in behalf of the true, the beautiful, and the 
good. Nothing is beautiful but truth. Whatsoever things 
are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, or of good report, think 
of. Introspect your motives. Be sincere. Meanwhile, keep 
circumspecting. The shams, the affectations, the hypocrisy, 
the nonsense, the idiosyncrasies, that you despise and deprecate 
in another man or woman or boy or girl, eradicate and extermi- 
nate forever from your own disposition and dealings. As to 
what is "of good report," study the prophets, the sages, the 
wits. The existence of a custom or conventionality is only 
presumptive — not conclusive — of its being the correct thing. 
What is the ephemeral admiration or applause of a shallow 
coterie or a silly rabble, when weighed against the Well-done 
of Supreme Eternal Conscience ? 

Good breeding is surface Christianity. — Dr. Oliver W. Holmes. 

A moral, sensible, and well-bred man 

Will not affront me, and no other can. JV. Cowper. 

With the sweet charity of speech, 

Give words that heal and words that teach. 

Lydia Huntingto?i Sigourney. 

Old cunning stagers 
Say fools for arguments use wagers. Samuel Butler. 

A large mass of error is easily embalmed and perpetuated by a 
little truth. — Charles Mackay. 

No man is hurt but by himself. — Diogenes. 

Be wisely worldly, but not worldly wise. Francis Quarles. 

We laugh to see a whole flock of sheep jump because one did so : 
might not one imagine that superior beings do the same by us, and 
for exactly the same reason ? — Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. 



Chapter XXVIII. 

REALIZATION. 

What Three Leading Experiential U in the Sc 

the Afoun 

(i) The kindness of preserving resources of kind: 
Your life is short, and your physical and mental forces limited. 
Waste no time nor ener. 

Hours are golden links, ' • n, 

Reaching heaven ; hut <•; 
Take them, lest the ch -en 

Ere thy pilgrimage be <: rocter. 

Squander no voice upon deaf ear mment. 

Beware of false prophets. Test tx ou fully 

premium bestowed on a pretender <>r istice 

to modest merit. Don't give pearls to j >igs. Help ingratitude 
punish itself. Keep your equanimity. Don 
nerves by needlessly fussy anxieties your future. I 

borrow morrow-trouble. You can't cross Jo: 
get to it. Look at these lilies! Tl fulfil the condi- 

tions of their existence : and what more beaut only 

to be at one with your environment, and all will i ound 

right eventually. 

If any one say that he has seen a just man in want of bread, I 
answer that it was in some place where there \\ 
— St. Cleme)it. 

It is the slowest pulsation which is the most vital. The I 
then, know how to wait as well as to i All good abides 

with him who waiteth wisely. — H. B. 1 

Liberality consists less in giving profusely than in giving judi- 
ciously. — John de la Bruyk 

(2) The kindness of considerate judgment Sors* 

motives, opinions, or conduct. Recollect the 
yourself to find yourself prematurely and wrongfully censured 



REALIZATION 1 39 

by folks who have ignored premises that would, if pondered^ 
have led to a conclusion in your favor. " Love . . . taketh not 
account of evil." * 

Before the birth of love, many fearful things took place, through 
the empire of necessity; but, when this god was born, all things arose 
to men. — Socrates. 

Think on thy wants, on thy faults. Recollect all the patience, all 
the kindness, all the tenderness which has been shown thee. . . . 
Think how the power of affection can make all things right. — Fred- 
erika Bremer. 

The few records that we possess of the personal intercourse of 
Jesus with those around him show great insight into character. He 
seemed to understand every one, — John the Baptist, Peter, Thomas, 
Nicodemus, Pilate, Paul, the Pharisees, Judas, — and the peculiarity 
of his judgment of them was its liberality. He was only harsh 
toward the Pharisees, and his harshness to them consisted simply 
in describing them as they were. — Dr. James F. Clarke. 

The highest exercise of charity is charity toward the uncharitable. 
— Joseph S. Buck7?iinster. 

The best of us are but poor wretches just saved from shipwreck r 
can we feel anything but awe and pity when we see a fellow-passenger 
swallowed up by the waves ? — George Eliot. 

Never does a man portray his own character more vividly than 
in his manner of portraying another. — J. P. F Richter. 

When dunces are satiric, 

I take it for panegyric. Dean Jonathan Swift. 

You cannot gather back the scattered seeds 
Which far and wide will grow to noxious weeds, 
Nor can the mischief once by scandal sown 
By any penance be again undone. 

Mary E. C. Johnson (Mo?itreal Witness). 

The precept against prejudging is perhaps most often ig- 
nored in the opinion of one partisan or sect against another.. 

Early Christians painted the saints of other religions as demons, — 
sculptured them as gargoyles. Some later Christians have substi- 
tuted slander for argument, and to prove conventional theories have 
set forth for theologic gargoyles the "infidel" on a death-bed sur- 
rounded by horrors, the " materialist " as given up to sensuality, or 
" man of science " living in an arctic sea of negation, perishing" 
without hope. . . . Very few persons are competent to pursue those 
philosophical studies which underlie the various conclusions called 
nominalism, realism, intuitionalism, utilitarianism, idealism, material- 

*I. Cor. xiii., 5. 



I 4 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

ism* But the latter word has a familiar sound: materialism is 
related to matter, and matter plainly means the earth and flesh and 
t>lood, food and drink. Consequently, a materialist must mean a 
£ross, fleshly character, a man who believes in nothing he cannot bite; 
and, as opposed to the idealist, he must be a man without ideas.— 
Mo7icure D. Conway [Idols and Ideals, p. 16). 

Minds of ordinary calibre ordinarily condemn everything that is 
beyond their range. — Due de Rochefoucauld. 

Remember that what you believe will depend very largely upon 
what you are. — Dr. A T oah Porter. 



Stiff in opinions, always in the \\Tong, . . . 

So over-violent or over-civil 

That every man with him was God or Devil. 

Grunt up a solemn lengthened groan, 
And damn a' parties but your own. 

Compound for sins they are inclined to 

By damning those they have no mind to, . . . 

And one another clapper-clawing. 

That frown upon St. Giles' sins, but blink 
The peccadilloes of all Piccadilly. 



John Dry den. 
Robert Burns. 

Samuel Butler. 
Thomas Hood. 



On the precept as to kindness of judgment, another point 
remains to be noted. In contradistinction from that tendency 
to mere moralism, which sacrifices the concrete, the prac: 
to one-sidedness or egotism (which tendency, for want of an 
exact name, we defectively designate sometimes " Puritanism," 
sometimes " Pharisaism/' or sometimes deism" ,t Jesus 

was pre-eminently — in the better and reverent sense of the 
term — a man of the world. He was no cynic or pessimist. 
He never stood aloof from any proper festivities to which his 
friends invited him, never questioned the moth ther par- 

ticipants therein, never chided the cheer of child or youth or 
maiden or elder with croaking of everlasting torments. He 
rejoiced with those that were rejoicing. He wept with those 
that were weeping. He would do himse'f and others all the 
good he could on any day of the week whatever, anv abstract 
old inhibitions and conventionalities to the contrary- notwith- 
standing. He would help himself to a handful of lunch from 
a friend's wheat-field, whenever sure his friend would re 
to know he had done so. 



* The younger reader will see in the unabridged dictionary the true meaning cf 
these words, "nominalism," "realism." etc.. as used bv metapV, 
t See ante, chap, xvii., M Harmonization. *' 



mmm 



REALIZATION I4r 

Doubtless, he listened indulgently to all the pleased prattle 
of Mary or Martha about the progress of the lilies and the 
roses she had been cultivating to charm his anticipated visit. 
If afterwards any affliction came to her household, he gave 
what solace he could; and this, with no such reprimand as 
Sheridan — or some other mirror-holder — represents given to 
a cheerful, blind youth by a severe matron, " When tribulation 
is sent to us, we ought to ' tribulate.' " He never encouraged 
us to be hypercritical in scanning our neighbors' methods of 
promoting piety. Piety might enter at the eye or ear. He 
gave no warrant for the proceeding, rather forcibly mentioned 
by James R. Lowell, " The Puritans thrust beauty out of the 
meeting-house, and slammed the door in her face." 

The Puritans who decapitated statues and broke the superb win- 
dows of stained glass did not do this to wage a warfare with art, but 
with what art represented. It covered a lie, it made a beautiful exte- 
rior to falsehood, it represented what was not true ; and they, sturdy 
men, honest and upright, hated lies and deceit, and would have none 
of it. But we in a later generation, grown wiser with the ages, see 
differently : we know that the mission of art is to beautify, to soften, 
to elevate, to refine ; that it broadens men's ideas, that it makes them 
better. . . . The words that applied to Palestine eighteen centuries ago 
— "A rich man cannot inherit the kingdom of God" — apply to us 
only in a modified sense. If men win money honestly, they have 
every right to do with it what they will, so they do not subvert its 
uses, and make it pander to their animalism, but develop instead the 
more spiritual portions of their nature, which have been growing 
ever since the world began. — Henry Ward Beec her. 

A thing of beauty is a joy forever : 

Its loveliness increases : it will never 

Pass into nothingness, but still will keep 

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 

Full of sweet dreams, and health and quiet breathing. 

Therefore on every morrow are we wreathing 

A flowery band to bind us to the earth, 

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth 

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, 

Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways 

Made for our searching ; yes, in spite of all, 

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 

From our dark spirits. 

John Keats. 

To contemplate things lovely is always an ascent. — David Swing. 

Yet the Puritans' meeting-house was a true sanctuary. To 
their Sabbath home applied the adage, " Home is home, be it 
never so homely. " 



142 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Home's not merely four square walls, 

Though with pictures hung and gilded : 
Home is where affection calls, 

Filled with shrines the heart hath builded. Queen. 

While there is not a single passage in the New Testament from 
which it can be inferred that, under Christianity, there is such a duty 
as Sabbath-keeping or such a sin as Sabbath-breaking, certain cham- 
pions are continually crying out for stricter penal laws enforcing the 
observance of the first day of the week. The worst effect of such 
demands is that they inevitably provoke opposition to a custom 
which is of great value to society. The practice of devoting one day 
in seven to moral, religious, and social uses stands firmly upon its 
own merits, and, like Sunday-schools, needs no other support. — 
Sa?nuel J. Barrows. 

An eye-witness of the Pilgrims' departure from Holland testi- 
fies that they were not without the right sort of cheerfulness : — 

And when the ship was ready to carry us away, the brethren that 
stayed having again solemnly sought the Lord with us and for us, and 
we further engaging ourselves mutually as before, — they, I say, that 
stayed at Leyden feasted us that were to go, at our pastor's house, 
being large; where we refreshed ourselves, after tears, with singing 
of psalms, making joyful melody in our hearts, as well as with the 
voice, there being many of the congregation very expert in music ; 
and indeed it was the sweetest melody that ever mine ears heard. . . . 
So lifting up our hands to each other, and our hearts for each other 
to the Lord our God, we departed, and found his presence with us; 
in the midst of our manifold straits He carried us through. — Ec: 
Winslow. 

And, right here, we must never forget that we can infinitely 
better dispense with all of a certain kind of art beauty than 
" endure, then pity, then embrace " some of the concomitants 
thereof that characterized the court of Charles II. And a 
word may be added as to the martyrdom of Mrs. Stowe's Uncle 
Tom for construing the precept, " Servants, obey your masters, *' 
to justify his refusal to disclose to Legree the hiding-place of 
Emeline and Cassy ; also as to the nun's lie to the inspector 
in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. An editorial, referring to 
M. J. Savage's critique on Frances Power Cobbe's new book, 
elucidates this great moral problem of the ages as follows : — 

In the example that Mr. Savage adduces, in which the Sister of 
Charity tells a lie to Javert, to save Jean Valjean from an unjust return 
to the galleys, we readily condone the falsehood, and may even join in 
Victor Hugo's rhapsody upon it. But on the other hand, when, in 
Scott's Heart of Mid-Lothian^ Jeanie Deans refuses to tell a I 
save the life of her own sister, we are struck with the moral grandeur 
•of the Scotch girl; and so far from thinking, as Mr. Savage implies, 



REALIZATION 1 43 

"that she ought to have been herself the victim," on that account we 
cry "Amen! " to her truthfulness, and think the angels in heaven are 
weak in their ethics, if they do not join in the benediction. 

Now, each of these cases seems perfectly good as against the other, 
and together they seem to furnish a practical antinomy in morals. 
It must be noted, however, in the first case, that the elevation which 
belongs to the act comes from the fact that it is some sacrifice to the 
nun not to tell the truth, and that the lie is told to promote the cause 
of justice as well as mercy. If the nun were a habitual liar, the story 
would have no more effect upon us than the lie of any common per- 
jurer. Yet, even with this clearly in mind, the two examples stand 
out as illustrations of moral contradictions, each of which seems just 
in itself, but which stand in bold opposition to each other when we 
bring them together. They seem to indicate that each of the two 
moral theories which they are adduced to support needs the help of 
the other. The transcendental theory of absolute right must be held 
as practically a relative one, when it is exercised, as in every human life, 
under finite and relative conditions. On the other hand, the expe- 
riential theory would be viciously weak, if it could be characterized 
as Mahaffy characterizes the society described in Hesiod, " where 
private interest is the paramount object and the ultimate test of 
morals." It needs to make its generalizations of happiness as broad 
and high as the heavens, and to recognize not merely the provisional, 
the expedient, and the "useful," but the universal and eternal side of 
human relations. 

The theory of evolution in morals throws great light upon most 
difficult ethical problems. It shows us the growth of human con- 
ceptions of right and wrong, truth and falsehood. But it does not 
prove to us that right and wrong, truth and falsehood, are merely 
human creations. If human experience proves anything, it proves 
indubitably that man is conditioned morally as he is physically, and 
that he can only develop healthfully along certain lines which are 
implicated in his primal constitution and revealed by experience, but 
which are no more the creation of his experience than the planet on 
which he stands, or the laws which hold the worlds in perfect order 
on their courses. It is the Truth that determines humanity, and not 
alone humanity that determines the Truth. And when Jeanie Deans 
refused to tell a lie, we may be positive that the noble girl was not 
thinking alone of her own advantage, or of her sister's advantage, or 
the welfare of the race, or the authority of the court, but of the 
authority of the Truth, which was as real to her as Go i himself. 
And no one would more readily agree with Mr. Savage than Jeanie 
Deans, — that "all the happiness of the world comes from keeping 
God's laws of life, and all the misery from breaking them." — Samuel 
J. Barrows {Christian Register ; June 16, 1S81). 

To this, Mr. Savage replied : — 

. . . Our only possible standard of judgment is not any personal 
whim, but the race experience as to those courses of conduct that con- 



144 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

duce to human well-being. If there is any absolute or tra?: 
reason for doing one thing and not doing another, we can never know 
it. We have no absolute knowledge of anything. And to say that a 
thing is transcendent is to say that it transcends knowledge. There 
may be a transcendent reason for the action of gravitation or elec- 
tricity, but it does not concern us in any practical \va an only 
study them in their effects. — Christian Register, Jt; 

The comment as to the nun reminds us of R. Brinsley Sheri- 
dan's witticism, " I never scruple to tell a lie to help a friend, 
but it hurts my conscience awfully to be found out." It did 
not hurt Sheridan's principles much, forsooth, whenever the 
friend he fibbed for was himself. When picked up intoxicated, 
he answered the police officer's demand for his name, M Will 
force ! " 

The dilemma of Hugo's nun. Uncle Tom, Jeanie Deans, etc., 
recalls Fichte's argument : — 

The well-known illustration of the may make our thoughts 

clearer : A man pursued by his enemy with a drawn dagger hides 
himself in your presence. His enemy . ■ here he 

is. If you tell the truth, an innocent man is murd , so 

some conclude, you must tell a lie-. Hut how is it tl 
reasoners rush so quickly to the crooked 

bilities are open to them'on the stra th ? In the hr>t pU 

why should you tell the questioner either th 
not some third alternative ? tjr n that 
any answer; that he seems to ha\ 
that you advise him in all kindness 
will take the part of the pursued and defend nil 
life, which, moreover, it is your absolute d 
you urge, his rage would be turned 
does it happen that you calculate onl] 

a second one is certainly among the possibilities,— namely, th 
adversary, struck with the justice and the boh. ce, 

may withdraw from the pursuit of his enem feelings 

grow cooler, and be willing to come to terms with him. But SUM) 
that he should attack you. Whywill youat all ( 

it is your unquestionable duty to protect the wn 

body, since, whenever human life is in da- 

right to think of the security of your ap- 

pears that the immediate object of vour lie ^h- 

bors life, but only to come out of this d, 

moreover, yours was no actual danger, but on s Ac 

cases. It seems, then, that vou were willing' to He D 
the remote possibility of coming to harm ! 

Suppose, however, that he attacks vou, does it no follow 

that you are overpowered by the attack, and t 
is possible ? According to the supposition, the fugitive has hidden 



REALIZATION I45 

himself in your immediate vicinity : you are now in danger, and he is 
obliged by gratitude, as well as by general sense of duty, to hasten to 
your assistance. What right have you to assume decidedly that he will 
not do this ? Or suppose he does not come to your help, yet you 
have gained time by your resistance, and it may chance that others 
will come to support you. If, after all, nothing of the kind happens, 
and you must fight alone, why, then, are you so sure of being defeated? 
You do not allow for the strength which even your body may receive 
from the firm resolution to tolerate absolutely nothing that is wrong, as 
well as from the enthusiasm of a righteous cause ; nor do you take into 
account the weakness which may come over your adversary, through his 
confusion and a consciousness that his cause is unjust. In the worst 
case, you can only die ; and death releases you from all further obliga- 
tion to the assailed man, while at the same time it saves you from the 
danger of ?. lie. — Johann G. Fichte. 

Legislators, however, are agreed that you always have a 
11 right to think of the security of your own life." 

Mr. Savage's replication recalls the words of a devout veteran, 
thinker : — 

Tyndall's deistical work, Christianity as Old as the Creation, or the 
Gospel a Republication of the Law of Nature, admits in its title the 
strongest ground, nay, the only ground, on which we can believe 
or defend Christianity. To suppose it a divine after-thought, a sup- 
plementary creation, an excrescence upon nature, is to dishonor it under 
shelter of pretended advocacy, — nay, more, it is to impugn the divine 
immutableness, the integrity of those attributes which underlie all relig- 
ion. The highest view of Christianity is that which regards it as the 
religion of nature, as the constitutional law of the spiritual universe, 
as corresponding to the mathematical laws which are embodied in the 
material universe, — absolute, necessary, eternal truth, that which al- 
ways was and ever will be. Revelation did not create it any more than 
Newton created the law of universal gravitation, or Kepler the laws 
of planetary motion. — Dr. A. P. Peabody. 

Last, though not least, may be cited two counsellors on the 
supremacy of "the Inner Light." 

Right and duty in the hearts of men have for a long time been the 
same in their essence under all systems, or under no system. The 
fatalist Zeno scourged the doctrine of moral responsibility into his 
thievish slave, and Spinoza, the pantheist, at whose doctrine the 
Christian teachers shudder, exhibited in his life the Christian virtues 
in their full effulgence. Legislators do not inquire into the grounds of 
"liberty and necessity." Laws are made and administered according 
to the needs of society, as viewed by the most enlightened in their 
day. The ethical teaching changes from age to age, because morals 
is a progressive science. We should hang Drakes and Cabots to-day 
as pirates ; but the Christian Queen Elizabeth feted them and went 



I46 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

shares with them in the loot of Philip's treasure- ro slavery 

was not odious to Whitfield. As time goes on, many : e now 

endure will surely pass into the category of crinw 
Daily Advertiser, Aug. 12, 188 1). 

Man is more than constitutions. — John G. W 

All must be false that tl. ne great ei 

And all of God that 1 'td*r Popt. 

(3) The kindness of systematic charit phen H. 

Tyng's idea and plan of operations, as exemplified in the church 
whereof he is pastor in New York, is delineated in his pamphlet 
report thereof under three head-— ring, Training, and 

Work : — 

The ingathering goes on through popular Sunci 
evangelistic services during the week 
inquirers, etc. There is a temperan 
men that gives six o'clock Sun 
ticket for a friend, and be< 
last winter a very low and degi 

or more, were drawn in, so that nccess 

detectives in different parts of th< 
meeting is held. 

The basement of the church i dining-r 

and all the applian .en there 

is a society composed of shop-girls etc., th 

evening in the week i 
the members of the church b 
stated distribution of it to the 
The church dispensary furnish 
physicians who visit at stated times 

are settled for the poor without ch urial society pro-. 

for their interment. My u evcrv 

department of need. Like the 
on the man, eye to eye, hand to ha- 
his want, whatever that may be. 

This recalls the " Associated Cha id other 

cities, wherein by personal visit 
of want are remedied, emplovn. 
prevented* Each a little — a lit:; 
telling aggregate. 

In thirty years, the Children's jt of 

New York City 67,000 children, many of whom have be< 
farmers, lawyers, merchants, ph . 

*See suggestions by Abby W. M 
and others, in the report of the W 

Of Oct. 12, 1SS2. •*•—*• m%wc—mw 



REALIZATION 147 

good men's wives. . In the newsboys' lodging-houses, such 
attention is paid to health that, out of 187,000 who have been 
in them, only one death has occurred. In the girls' lodging- 
houses, 100,000 girls have been lodged and taught. The result 
has been that, while New York has grown from 800,00c to 
1,200,000 inhabitants, youthful crime has decreased. The rec- 
ords of the courts show that, between 1859 an d 1881, the 
annual commitments of female vagrants have diminished from 
5,700 to 1,800; the commitments of girls for petty larceny, 
from about 1,000 annually to about 300. Organized crime 
has been met by organized Christian influence. The only hope 
of the community is in the co-operation of its individuals for 
the true and the right. 

It is not growing like a tree, 

In bulk, doth make men better be ; 
Or standing like an oak three hundred year, 
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere. 
A lily of a day is fairer far in May, 

Although it fall and die that night, — 

It was the plant and flower of Light. 
In small proportions we just beauties see, 
And in short measures life may perfect be. 

Ben Jonsoii. 

'* Write me as one that loves his fellow-men." 

The angel wrote and vanished. The next night 

He came again with a great wakening light, 

And showed their names whom love of God had blest. 

And, lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. 

Leigh Hunt. 

Though no siegeless rampart guard us, 

There's no peril shall appall, 
Be one bulwark not debarred us 

When the foe shall threaten thrall : 

Truth and faithful front in all! 
When we falter from Iter altar, 

Heaven heed not blind Error's call! 

Make the traitor's mad arm fall ! 
Rise for Truth, when hordes assault her, 

Phalanx firm as Cathay's wall L 
Bigot folly scorning, 
Truth our ways adorning, 

Like our sires we'll crown her 

With our lives and honor. 
Cherish we the trust, 
Hallowing the Fathers' dust ! 

Truth and the Right forever ! 

Heart and home shall never 
Hope and Freedom sever. 
We will be true. We'll dare and do. 

Peal on from sea to sea 
The song, " We stand, the Free ! " 

B. F. B. {Centennial Ode, 1876). 



Chapter XXIX. 

SUPPLICATIOl 

What Three Views of Christ* tr f 

(i) The supplicational, which looks mainly to an objective 
blessing from prayer: (2) the aspirational, which aims chiefly at 
a subjective benefit ; and (3) the intermediate, which takes for 
model the combination of the two found in the Lord's Prayer. 

The Lord's Prayer contains the sum total of religion and D 
Duke of Wellington. 

In its seven petitions, it expresses the whole course of reli j 
experience : in the first three, the unhindered flight of the 
God; in the next three, the hindrance- 

the sense of dependence on earthly circumstances, and b nBict 

with sin; while the last petition expresses the solution which har- 
monizes this conflict. — W, M. Dt li'ette. 

I desire no other evidence of the truth of Chri- than the 

Lord's Prayer. — Baronne dt Stael-I/ols: 

Only in the mouth of the Christian does the Lor Stain 

its full meaning, since only the Christia er in the 

full sense of the word, only he can pray with right intelligence for 
the coming of God's kingdom, and onlv he > our 

debts as we forgive our debtors. — F. A. G. Tkoi 

Tholuck says the Greek word [epi 1 1 transit 

(in the N. R. margin "for the coir occurs nov 

else in the New Testament, nor in any ot the twelve hundred 
works of Greek literature that remain to us. Some n 
means "necessary,'" and that the expression is a : 
petition for whatever we need — whether of temj spir- 

itual things — to make us strong for the day's occ. 

Solicitude is the audience chamber of God. — S. IjxhJ 



SUPPLICATION 149 

The supplicational view is that of all nations in their primitive 
condition. The Jews prayed seven times a day. In all 
Mohammedan countries, all men pray at fixed hours. The 
sacred books of the Hindus and of the Parsees are one long 
liturgy of supplication. In Buddhist countries, the people 
assemble in the streets of the city at sunset for prayer. The 
walls of the Egyptian tombs are covered with supplications to 
Osiris and Amun. In the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, 
their general in command, Xenophon, before each day's march, 
offered public prayer to the gods of Olympus. Among enlight- 
ened peoples, however, as Mr. Conway remarks, — 

No one prays that the sun may stand still and lengthen his day, or 
that his water tank may yield pure wine, or a fish just purchased hold 
a coin large enough to pay his tax, or for restoration of the dead. 
But the movements of the clouds seem so irregular that an arbitrary 
power is associated with them, and some persons yet pray for rain or 
sunshine. But there are fewer and fewer, as meteorology becomes 
more and more developed as a science. That which a man soweth 
he shall not by prayer escape reaping. — Idols and Ideals, p. 65. 

A poetic phase of the supplicational view is presented by 
Dr. John Ryland, an English (Baptist) clergyman : — 

Prayer has divided seas, rolled up flowing rivers, made flinty rocks 
gush into fountains, quenched flames of fire, muzzled lions, disarmed 
vipers and poisons, marshalled the stars against the wicked, stopped 
the course of the moon, arrested the sun in its rapid race, burst open 
iron gates, recalled souls from eternity, conquered the strongest devils, 
commanded legions of angels down from heaven. Prayer has 
Dridled and chained the raging passions of man, and routed and 
destroyed vast armies of proud, daring, blustering atheists. Prayer 
brought one man from the bottom of the sea, and carried another in a 
chariot of fire to heaven. What has not prayer done ? * 

Herewith may be classed many poetic aphorisms like that of 
Martin F. Tupper, " Prayer is the slender nerve that moves 
the muscles of Omnipotence." In a low condition of society, 
a supplicational and a meditative view has each presented an 
abuse so identical that extremes appear to meet. Thus alleged 
answers to prayer have been explained : — 

* For a similar " daring " belief (expressed without " blustering "), see Dr. S. I. 
Prime's Five Years of Prayer, ivith the Answers. Also the newspaper reports of 
Rev. D. L. Moody's Tabernacle Services, whereat were read requests for prayers for 
specific objects. Also, The Wonders 0/ Prayer, by H. T. Williams, drawing from 
•certain coincidences certain inferences. Thus, upon the death of a cow belonging to 
Rev. C. H. Spurgeon's grandfather, a neighboring missionary society sent the loser 
£20. A reviewer, imagining himself logical, questioned whether the cow would have 
died, had the society been out of funds. 



I5 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

A German savant discovered the long-venerated bones of a saint to 
be those of a donkey, but on this account they had not been a whit 
less remedial. "Any state of the body earnestly expected," says a 
learned physiologist, "is very likely to ensue." There is a man in 
Belgium whose hands and feet bleed every Friday, as it were from 
nails driven into them. The priests say it is a miracle like unto the 
famous stigmata of St. Francis of Assisi. A commission of medical 
men, appointed by the government, say it is the result of morbid 
expectation, the whole energy of the victim's nature being directed 
this end, so nattering to his ecclesiastical pretension 
a Consumptives' Home in Boston supported entirely It 

has its contribution-boxes in scores of public places. 
labelled with the name and policy of the institution. When a people 
are wasted with famine, it is not even nece- hear their 

prayers for succor. It is sufficient for those who can help them to 
hear of the fact. . . . 

One shattered train, one sinking wreck, ill the imaginary 

interferences that have ever been recorded, and remands them at 
once and forever to the province of coincidence or overhearing or 
exaggeration. Of what avail the baby-house suggestion thai 
anticipating human prayer, left certain open the net.- 

his laws through which he can reach out handfuls of benefits and 
immunities,— winds out of some e, or showers of needed 

rain, and quiet of the sea or of the heart ? I n armor s<> com- 

pact that there is not a joint which any interfering touch can pene- 
trate. . . .To pray for so much interference as would quell one coming 
storm, or squeeze one rain-drop out of a reluctant cloud. 
that the entire history of the universe up to date may be revised, and 
that God may change the essence of his nature witl 
imaginary comfort or advantage. — John IV. Chadwick (TJu Faith of 
Reason, pp. 174, 179). 

A writer in the London Telegraph, commenting: on the mis- 
take of the rector at Rhyl, North Wales, in open i'rayer- 
Bookat the "Prayer for Rain " and supplicating "rain on the 
inheritance," when the Primate's circular had invited prayers for 
fair weather, commends the simple earnestness of the Orkney 
minister who, being asked to pray for better weather, prayed,. 
" Lord, send us braw weather, and a bit sough of 1 hat will 
dree the stra' and winna harm the heads: but, if ye bla 
tearin', rivin', bletherin' gale, like what we've been* having, yell 
play the vera mischief \vi' the aits, and fairly spoil a'." At least. 
the criticism would not here apply of "pumping prayers for I 
ineffable, though all the valves of menu . e. n 
This tendency to mingle advice with supplication was exempli- 
fied in the case of "the colored preacher w! ned to 
remind the Omniscient that the Republican party were letting 



SUPPLICATION 151 

"our breddren in de Souf be 'timidated by de wicked Demo- 
crats. Dey done bust de Freedmen's Bank. Lord, hold 'em in 
de holler ob dy han', ober de mouf of hell, an' scorch 'em, an' 
scorch 'em, but don't let 'em drop in ! " Or in that of another 
who, on learning that the assassinator of President Lincoln was 
hiding near in Maryland, prayed, " Lord, cotch him, and when 
dou hast cotcht him, don't be so mercifu' as dou art too apt to 
be, — genYly speakin'." This addressing God from an anthro- 
pomorphic stand-point recalls the rather blunt lines : — 

Just then there came another voice, 

In supplicating tones, 

" Oh ! may the grave be late to close 

O'er Neighbor David's bones ! " 

" There's surely one for me at last ! M 

But Satan cried, " Not yet ! 

He merely wants the man to live 

Until he pays a debt." 

In the case of prayers from diverse minds (instanced by Mr. 
Clemens in The Innocents Abroad, where persons on ships 
going in opposite directions pray each for winds to favor his 
own ship), Dr. Nehemiah Adams was wont to say that the 
Holy Spirit would lead each, etc., if sought aright. But his 
son, Capt. Robert C. Adams, declared : — 

Intercourse with numerous Christians, many of whom I was con- 
vinced prayed earnestly for the guidance of the Spirit, showed me 
that the Holy Spirit led each man to different and often opposing 
views, though one devout and highly educated Christian assured me 
that no one ever studied the Bible prayerfully without believing as he 
did ; but I found that his present adherents numbered only two. — The 
Index, November, 1881. 

And the writer of another open letter suggests : — 

You say, if we had Daniel's faith, we, too, might venture into the 
lions' den without fear of harm. Is this teaching true to life ? Are 
the righteous saved from physical injury, — from sickness and from 
sudden death ? Had the moral quality of the passengers on the train 
that broke through the bridge at Ashtabula anything to do with the 
disaster ? Did the fire or frost spare the body of the sweet singer 
[P. P. Bliss] whose death all good people deplore? — Dr. W. H. 
Ryder (Open Letter to D. L. Moody). 

Though President Garfield died, the prayers for his restora- 
tion were not, in every sense, futile. Supplications for bless- 
ings are now superseding imprecatory, clannish prayers, the 
world over, still slowly.* 

* See M. J. Savage's Religion of Evolution, p. 150. 



I52 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe. 
The record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot 
educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were im- 
planted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may re- 
ject them. — Dr. O. W. Holmes. 

The tribe or individual that lets in vindictive imaginings of 
a neighbor's vexatious doings, and thereupon burns to 
a shoe cast out over Edom. hurts one's own self more than 
Edom. So, too, as to a prayer that one's neighbor's wife be left 
a widow, and his children be fatherk e continual', 

bonds and beg "* An excess of solitary reflection I nor- 

bid brooding and melancholy. The living may too much lav to 
heart the great truth enunciated by the old Hebrew, M It is 
better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of 
feasting"; or by Shakspere, "My desolation doth tx 
make a better life.'' Where "spiritual moods, 
and rhapsodies, instead of being a part all. 

That way mad 

The Presbytery of Edinburgh, in petitioned Queen 

Victoria to appoint a day of national fa tor 

the extermination of the Asiatic ra thei. 

The Home Secretary, Lord Palmerston, replied that the affairs 
of this world are regulated by natural laws, OH the 1 
or neglect of which the weal'or woe of mankii hat 

one of those laws connects disease with the ions of 

bodies, and it is by virtue of this law that cont.. 
either in crowdeo! cities or in places when po- 

sition is going on; that man, bv exerting hii 
or neutralize these noxious influences, and the of 

the cholera proves that he has not exerted himself. ng 

that such a fast would in Scotland be s kept, 

and by causing mental depression and ph on pre- 

pare thousands of delicate persons, before two: 
had passed, to receive the deadlv poison already lurking around 
them, he advised the petitioners to employ theii 
ning and executing measures for purifying the localities of the 
poorer classes from those sources of contagion which, if allow 
to remain, would "infallibly breed pestilence and be fruitful in 
death, in spite of all the pravers and a united : 

inactive nation." 

But the fact that some men pray unreasonably does not con- 
trovert the fact that men cannot help pray H. 

. 10. 



SUPPLICATION 153 

Chapin says, " We may be sure that that which is so spontane- 
ous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and 
methods in the arrangements of a boundless Providence." And 
S. Taylor Coleridge is not the only witness that 

He prayeth best who loveth best. 

The properly intermediate view of prayer may be well repre- 
sented by the cry of a new-born babe. This cry means : I am 
in pain and weakness and hunger and ignorance and fear. I 
know nothing. What ? Ah ! I think : therefore I am.* There 
is an Ego and a non-Ego. I have but one impulse, a yearning 
to find in all this not-me — in all this strange, new environ- 
ment — a Somewhat that shall relieve, shield, nourish me. 
Nothing more ? Ah ! that Somewhat will never satisfy this 
yearning unless it also have consciousness,— be a part of, or in 
alliance with, the me sufficiently to sympathize with my soul- 
want. Nevertheless, my bodily want is the more immediately 
exigent of the two ; and, in the process of its becoming satisfied, 
I have a glimmering sense of adaptation of means to end. 
With the comfort there comes to be associated a pallid face and 
two sweet, half-sad, half-glad, loving eyes, longing down at 
mine. My solace is just in proportion to my earnest that the 
new found, responsive Somewhat is able and willing to bear my 
sorrow and to supplement my void, my perishing need of knowl- 
edge, strength, and communion. Soon, I peacefully slumber. 
On awaking, I experience the same sense of want ; I find my- 
self apprehensive that I am alone. Suppose Reason (or any 
other third unknown entity) were to say to me that the original 
Somewhat, the no longer " x" the Being that had demonstrated 
herself to my spirit as a power not myself that makes for sweet- 
ness and light, would not forsake my cradle, and that therefore 
my crying would be very impertinent, what should I immedi- 
ately answer? It would be a cry: " I must cry ! I want to 
cry ! " And would not the answer be a sound one ? 

Years elapse, and after I have learned a litt'e of good and 
evil, right and wrong, and feel that there is a Power not myself 
— yet in some sense a part of myself, my ideal — that makes 
for sweetness and light and righteousness, a Somewhat having 
sensibility, intelligence, and will, I find myself in a like condi- 
tion of spiritual want, and with the same lonesome yearning. 
If now I cry out a supplication to that Being, and Reason 
intervenes a Wherefore, I can only reply : " Mind thine own 
proper business, O P.eason ! Do not usurp the function of 
Faith and Feeling." 



* " Cogito, ergo sum." — Rene Descartes. 



154 Rr ' 

Hence the adage that the only sensible prayer is the earnest 
prayer. And right here is found the j>oint of the parable of the 
unjust judge,* the ** ubleth me*': also 

that of the loaves loaned at mi. ecause of his 

importunity x anaiii- 

And auguagc ) 

And here be it ed that the name of ti what is, 

in one regard, of no coo —whet 

" Mater " or u Patei 
the growth of gratitude, of 

As the moth- 
child, all urn e, so the Lord comes and looks 
on us with tendei 
times the sick and - 
up its little drowsy arm to its mot: 
drawing her face 
and the mother is well 
when we, hali'-aw 
look up a little momi 
only a single, cry of 1 
— Z>r. J. 
Gazette, June, 1SS1). 

ibled dream in fear he n i 

" Matnni 

•■ng art. 
•»rM the thing* wc need 

Or. know 
H . ■ 

No 

I read the « 

W 

Help s within 

Thii 

All :! 






SUPPLICATION 155. 

Thy children dear; that neither life nor death, 

Nor angels, principalities, nor powers, 

Nor things that are, nor things to come, nor height, 

Nor depth, nor aught besides, shall ever part 

Thy children from thee. And when breaks the cry 

Of 'Father I from our glad or troubled lips. 

Whisper sweet words of peace : " Dear child, I know. 

Abide in me. My love is over thee." 

H. D. Cat/in (" Lovers Divining" Christian Register, May 26, 1881)- 

All that I feel of pity thou hast known 

Before I was ; my best is all thy own : 

From thy great heart of goodness mine but drew 

Wishes and prayers; but thou, O Lord, wilt do 

In thy own time, by ways I cannot see, 

All that I feel when I am nearest thee. 

Anon. 

Keep me from mine own undoing, 

Help me turn to thee when tried, 
Still my footsteps, Father, viewi: 

Keep me ever at thy side. 

Anon. (H. and T. B./or C. and H., 57).. 

The way is dark, my Father. Cloud on cloud 
Is gathering thickly o'er my head, and loud 
The thunder roars above me. See, I stand 
Like one bewildered. Father, take my hand, 
And through the gloom lead safely home thy child. 

The day goes fast, my Father, and the night 
Is drawing darkly down. My faithless sight 
Sees ghostly visions ; fears, a spectral band, 
Encompass me. O Father, take my hand, 
And from the night lead up to light thy child. 

The way is long, my Father, and my soul 

- for the rest and quiet of the goal. 
While yet I journey through this weary land, 
Keep me from wandering. Father, take my hand : 
Quickly and straight lead to heaven's gate thy child. 

The path is rough, my Father. Many a thorn 
Has pierced me, and my weary feet, all torn 
And bleeding, mark the way. Yet thy command 
Kids me press forward. Father, take my hand : 
Then, safe and blest, lead up to rest thy child. 

The throng is great, my Father. Many a doubt 

And fear and danger compass me about, 

And foes oppress me sore. I cannot stand 

Or go alone. O Father, take my hand, 

And through the throng lead safe along thy child. 

The cross is heavy, Father. I have borne 
It long, and still do bear it. Let my worn 
And fainting spirit rise to that blest land 
Where crowns are given. Father, take my hand, 
And, reaching down, lead to the crown thy child. 

A non. ( The Appeal)- 



Chapter XXX. 
ASPIRATION. 

What generally Indorsed Sen time?; 

upon best promoting the Aspirational Element of T? 

With these, hymnology overflows. The Buddhist pr 
are said to have responded to the French missi . Hue 

and Gabet: "We ought to i er. Men of pr 

belong to all countries : they are strangers nowhere. Such is 
the doctrine taught by our Holy Books 

Under the intermediate thesis just considered, one may 
commend the objective theory of " help from or, even 

while having in view only the ctive good of self-help, 

aspiration, and exertion. The father in ie has 

never been deemed at all disingenuous for directing his sons 
to keep the heritage and di^ for a D The 

u treasure " was in the digging itself* and in the consoi 
health, harvests, and habits of industry, — a which an 

immediate attainment of the object directly longed for would 
have defeated. 

"Labor is worship," the I 
Listen ! that eloquent w 
Speaks to thy soul out of 
Labor is life ! 'tis the stil 
Idleness ever despaireth, i 
Keep the watch wound, or the 

Labor is nature's physician. — GaUn. 

I have fire-proof, perennial enjoyment rtoyments.— 

P. F. Richter. 

The reward of doing one duty is the power to perform anoth 
J3en Azai. 

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be cle 

Do noble things, not dream th 
And so make life, death, and : 

One grand, sweet s ChnrUs Km£ 

Joy's soul lies in the doing.— Wi 



ASPIRATION 157 

The reward is in the doing, 
And the rapture of pursuing 
Is the prize. 

Henry IV, Longfellow. 

Evidently there are two extremes, each having its peculiar 
evil. The man who never sequesters himself (or, as the New 
Revision beautifully renders it, enters into his " inner chamber "), 
and, when he has shut the door against the overbearing pressure 
of secular pursuits, contemplates his higher destinations, be- 
comes a grovelling earthworm rather than ^ 

A glorious thing 
Of buoyant wing. 

The woman's mind that is always in a giddy whirl of frivol- 
ities remains inane. " As one thinketh in his heart, so is he." If 
he longs to be submissive, patient, modest, liberal, considerate 
of his relations to his moral environment, such must he tend to 
become. To be godlike, he must meditate upon God ; to make 
any part of the attributes of Deity his own, he must aspire to 
the true, the beautiful, and the good. 

Is virtue a thing remote ? I wish to be virtuous, and, lo ! virtue is 
at hand. — Confucius. 

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, 

Whose loves in higher love endure ; 

What souls possess themselves so pure, 
Or is there blessedness like theirs ? 

Alfred Tennyson {hi 3 Tentorium, xxxii.). 

You need but wffl % and it is done. But if you relax your efforts, 
you will be ruined ; for ruin and recovery are both from within. — 
Epictetus. 

Use the temporal ; desire the eternal. — Thomas a Kempls. 

Learn as if you were to live forever ; live as if you were to die 
to-morrow. — Ausaius de Instills. 

Accordingly, many who hold only to the aspirational view 
take supplication simply as a means of aspiration. This ap- 
pears to be the gist of the averment of George Eliot : — 

The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer 
which seeks for nothing special, but is the yearning to escape from 
the limitations of our own weakness, and an invocation of all Good to 
enter and abide with us ; or else a self-oblivious lifting up of gladness, 
a Gloria in Excelsls that such Good exists ; both the yearning and the 
exultation gathering their utmost force from the sense of communion 



I5 8 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

in a form which has expressed them both for long generations of 
struggling men.— Daniel Deronda, p. 333.* 

This recalls the prayer of another noble soul, Phcebe Cary: — 

I ask not that for me the plan 
Of good and ill be set aside, 

But that the common lot of man 
Be nobly borne and glorified. 

I know I may not always keep 
Mv steps in places green and sweet, 

Nor find the pathway of the deep 
% A path of safety to my feet ; 

But pray that when the tempest's breath 
Shall fiercely sweep my way about, 

I make not shipwreck of my faith 
In the unfathomed sea of doubt. 

//. and T. B. for C. andH. % 565. 

.A like model prayer is that of James Merrick: — 

Author of good, we rest on thee : 

Thine ever watchful 
Alone our real wants can 

Thy hand alone sup 
In thine all-gracious providence 

Our cheerful hopes confide ; 
Oh, let thy power be our defence, 

Thy love our footsteps guide. 
And since, by passion's force subdued, 

Too oft with stubborn will 
We blindly shun the latent good, 

And grasp the specious ill, — 
Not what we wish, but what we want, 

Let mercy still supply : 
The good unasked, O father, grant ; 

The ill, though asked, dc 

Methodist Hymns, 633 ; H. and T. B./or C 

There is trutli in Jeremy Taylor's aphorism : lt Every man 
can build a chapel in his breast, himself the priest, his heart 
the sacrifice and the earth he treads on the altar." But just 
how far a liturgy is a help to that " powerful movement 
feeling," just quoted from George Eliot, is a trite theme. 
Perhaps no more advanced thought can be found thereon than 
in a recent discourse by Dr. J. F. Clarke, on Jer. xxiii.. 
" What is the chaff to the wheat ? " — 

The Gentiles worshipped a God of power from fear and hope, 
deprecating divine vengeance, invoking divine favor. The Jl 
worshipped a God of Justice, seeking pardon for their sins, and 
thanking God for his help. No doubt, both Jew and Gentile - 

*For a rather exceptional illustration of " the theological paradox," M In order 
to pray for grace, we must have grace to pray." see J. T. Frowbrid.;. 
'*' Preaching for Selwin," in Coupon Bonds, and dihdr o 



ASPIRATION 159 

something higher, but this is the essence of the two kinds of prayer. 
They were both prayers of form, — of days, times, hours, methods. 
These have come down to us, for they have their origin in human 
weakness. But the divinest worship of all, the worship of the Father, 
needs no ritual nor liturgy, no sacred place nor sacred hour, no out- 
ward expression, no uttered prayers, even though they may have been 
consecrated by the associations of three thousand years. All these 
are helps, useful, and sometimes necessary; but they are not the 
essence of prayer. "Neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, 
shall men worship the Father." The highest worship of all is to 
carry with us evermore the sense of that heavenly protection, that 
divine tenderness. It is to look in and look up, at all time*, sure 
that he is near, that he is ready to pour his love into our soul. It 
is to feel, as Jesus felt, that we can do nothing of ourselves, and 
therefore to have our church, our oratory, our liturgy, in our heart, 
wherever we are. In the midst of work, of conversation, of amuse- 
ment, of daily care, we may thus walk in the Spirit and live in the 
Spirit. The Christian world is gradually passing into this highest 
style of prayer. It will not then pray less, but more ; for God will 
then write his law in the heart, and all shall know him, worship him, 
and love him. — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, May 28, 1881. 

Free prayer is natural, personal emotional : formal prayer is 
weighty, stately, reflective. It is hopeless to trv to mingle the two. 
The personal prayer which would be dignified is merely ponderous : 
the formal prayer which would be emotional is merely sentimental. 
But under our flexible methods there should be room for both. — 
Francis G. Peabody, {Saratoga Sermon, 1882). 

Similarly testifies another devout thinker: — 

That God is most discerned when we are at our best, in our most 
favored moments of spiritual collectedness and intensity, or in our 
most anguished moments of penitential self-knowledge in the light of 
his countenance, makes it impossible for prayer to be without effort. 
To draw nigh to him by withdrawing from all that does not bring him 
near cannot be effected without a sustained uplifting of ourselves. 
When we purposely resort to this as a religious duty for the sake of 
the blessings which we know will come upon us if we attain to a 
communion with him, there is no other act of our nature of so abso- 
lute a self-devotion. In the great outward deeds and sacrifices which 
fellowship with God inspires, all the human sympathies mingle with 
and sustain the service. In the act of communion which goes before, 
in which the Holy Spirit offers the service and apparels for it, the 
soul is "alone with the Alone." The world's supreme act of self- 
sacrifice was serene and calm in the moments of its performance, 
anguished and awful in the moments of its preparation. It was 
always in the intensity of prayer that our Lord saw what the Father 
willed him to do ; and the natural weakness which trembled and 
shrunk was poured into the bosom of the communing Comforter and 



l6o RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEW; 

replaced by his strength, so that the real trial was over before the 
outward trial came; and then no defeat was p<> ele- 
ment of infirmity had been brought to the I n<» dark- 
ness, and before him had passed away. — J. If. 

This recalls the aphorism of Richter, • I nines: it is 

a self-preached sermon." Especially so, when su 
with Dr. Clarke's earlier utterance : — 

Supposing the main purpose and aim of life to be directed toward 
truth and right, the main current of the heart to Ik 
and heaven, still it will happen that the 

there running the other way. < >ften it will happen tl all find 

ourselves for the time estranged from Ci.»d, and then 
make the discovery of oui \ cment by its effect upon 

We find it difficult to pray,— w 
our memory of past needs' rather th 

Our words mount up, our thoughts remain be ,ind 

indicates the estrangement of our heart 1 
return. Then, a special preparal 

God to teach us how to pray. W the 

desire for pardon, peace, the 

examine our past thought ^hat it 

has led us away from the true path. .' 
lty, there springs up once n 

again becomes the utterance of the heart.— The Ckri 
Prayer, p. 126. 

Does not this accord with the experience of every Christian p 
Let us see how far the as J view is held by the oracles 

of every sect and people, Cathoi 
bound thinker or tree thinker. Ail v. 
Thomas Fuller's admonit 

for either praying wiU make thi 

in sin will make thee des 

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the 

soul. It is the spirit ot G 

As soon as the man is at one • be e r Hc 

wil then see prayer in all action. cclinc 

Stroke nf V U> 7"* t "* kneclil < h * 

stroke of his oar, are true prayer, h nat ure f thoueh 

for cheap ends.- A\ W. Emerson , U p. 67, g 

ahfnT t !J is Y ie - V - Dr - C1 ; lrkc 

aoroadand ask tor some fore- 
takes for the legend of the t 
trine of I rayer what may be tra 



ASPIRATION l6l 

Plotinus, "The Flight of One Alone to the Only One," or, 
more freely, " The Fleeing of the Lonely to the Only." \$vyy 
[Movov Trpbg- tov Mow.]' And, in a sermon on Acts ix., 1 1 , he 
adds : — 

First of all, then, in prayer is the sense of a divine presence, the 
consciousness of a divine power, wisdom, and love above all, through 
all, and in us all. Nature without this all-pervading sense of Deity is 
cold and dead. Life without it has no sufficient aim and purpose. 
Sorrow and disappointment without it have no secure consolation. 
Without it there is no unity to the world, no meaning in existence. 
Without it, science itself would soon lose its interest ; for why study 
the facts and laws of a universe which came from nothing and is 
going nowhere ? 

In the Psalms there is this very striking petition, " Unite my heart 
to fear thy name." The soul needs the unity which comes from 
devotion to something infinite, perfect, the ideal beauty and goodness 
of things. This unites the heart and life, and prevents it from being 
wasted and distracted in the endless variety of nature. — Boston 
Saturday Evening Gazette, June 18, 1881. 

This may be supplemented by Mr. Emerson's observation : 
" Is not prayer a study of truth, a sally of the soul into the 
unfound infinite ? No man ever prayed heartily without learn- 
ing something." 

One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists, — one only: an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power, 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good. 
The darts of anguish fix not where the seat 
Of suffering hath been thoroughly fortified 
By acquiescence in the Will Supreme 
• For time and for eternity, by faith, 
Faith absolute in God, including hope, 
And the defence that lies in boundless love 
Of his perfections, with habitual dread 
Of aught unworthily conceived, endured 
Impatiently, ill-done, or left undone 
To the dishonor of his holy name. 
Soul of our souls and safeguard of the world ! 
Sustain thou only canst the sick of heart, 
Restore their languid spirits, and recall 
Their lost affections unto thee and thine. 



How beautiful this dome of sky ! 

And the vast hills in fluctuation fixed 

At thy command, how awful ! Shall the soul, 

Human and rational, report of thee 

Even less than these ? Be mute who will, who can ; 

Yet I will praise thee with impassioned voice. 

My lips that may forget thee in the crowd 



1 62 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEW. 

Cannot forget thee here, where thou hast I 
For thy own glory in the wilderne— 
Come labor when the worn-out frame requires 
Perpetual Sabbath : cor: 
And sad exclusion thro; e t sense ! 

But leave me unabated trust in th 
And let thy favor to the end of life 
Inspire me with ability to se 
Repose and hope among external : 
Father of heaven and earth ! and I am I 
And will possess my portion in content. 
IVm. Wordsworth {'* The E 

The same key-note. " Leave me Ui It 

reminds us of Home's metaphor, "1 e of 

Faith," or Bulwer-Lytton's hyperb h builds in the 

dungeon and the lazar-hoiise 'its sublimest shrin I, up 

through roofs of stone that shut out the eye ascends 
the ladder where angels glide to and fr 

human ey. 
No human thought thv f<»rm m 

But all cr- 
And thy great Life I 

And \ 
Thou art .i 

A'a>' 

And 
Into 

id vain the 

eternal n 

Yet thou 

But \\ 
To know their 

Thtmmt 

This recalls the \v< simple heart 

that freely asks in love obta a world 

in Buddha's aphorism, " The greatest ;. 

It may happen that two men shall profess the same religion, hold 
the same Bible, and call God by the . but one of them 

shall be a believer in the true God. and p the 

first commandment, and the other break it. For one ma 
this way:< " O Lord, I pray thee to save my soul. I know 
art a hard man, reaping where thou hat brewed; ar. 

though thou hast made me so that I am born :, and 

unable to do any good thing, thou dost require of me to obev 
love thee. I am wholly selfish and an enemy to thee, and am unable 
to love anything truly; but I admit I ought to love thee, notwith- 
standing. I do not see how I lilty in doing wrong, when I 
cannot do right; but I am told thai 
sinner, and so I do: I c f to be 



ASPIRATION 163 

Thou hast said that the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon 
him, and the wickedness of the wicked be upon him ; and yet I hope 
to be saved, not by any merits, or by becoming good myself, but by 
the merits and goodness of Jesus Christ. Amen." 

Now, that is one prayer. Here is another, uttered perhaps by a 
poor ignorant siave, who has never been allowed to read the Bible, 
and whose theological notions are therefore very simple and child- 
like: "O Lord, I do not know thee very well, but I believe thou 
art a good Master, and I want to be a good servant. O Master, show 
me how to do right. Help me, O Lord, to-day not to be angry, nor 
idle, nor to tell any lies, but to be faithful in everything. If I am 
beaten or ill-used unjustly, help me to bear it, as the good Master 
Jesus bore it patiently when they beat him. Amen." Now, these two 
both say, O Lord, but they are not worshipping the same being. . . . 

We believe in God when we believe in that which is divine in all 
things; when we see in men something divine and noble in the 
midst of all that is evil ; when we see in childhood something divine, 
and revere the innocence yet unstained by the world. So, too, we 
believe in God when we love our friends, not because they are of use 
to us, not because our tastes and theirs happen to agree just now, 
but because we see and admire in them some innate beauty which 
God stamps on each soul when he makes it ; some carnate and inborn 
charm of spontaneous sweetness or courage or honor or aspiration 
or reverence or humility or conscience which God gave them in his 
counsel before the foundation of the world. And we see God when 
we love all his creatures, whether thev are sympathetic with us or 
antipathetic, when we overlook their faults and pardon their offences, 
and care for their souls as God and Christ care for their souls. 
This is divine love, true love, which sees God; which whosoever has 
dwells in God and God in him. He may have many faults, vices, 
follies, sins but this generosity in his heart is the redeeming ele- 
ment ; this is Christ born within him, the hope of glory; this gives 
him a solid inward peace and satisfaction, and makes him assured and 
confident before God. — Dr. J. F. Clarke [Common Sense in Religion, 
pp.66, 71). 

When a pump is frequently used, the water pours out at the first 
stroke, because it is high ; but, if the pump has not been used for a 
long time, the water gets low, and when you want it you must pump a 
long while, and the water comes only after great efforts. It is so 
with prayer. If we are instant in prayer, every little circumstance 
awakens the disposition to pray, and desire and words are always 
ready ; but, if we neglect prayer, it is difficult for us to pray, for the 
water in the well gets low. — Felix Neff. 

Heaven is never deaf but when man's heart is dumb. — Francis 
Quarles. 

"Prayer," says St. Jerome, "is a groan." Ah! our groans are 
prayers as well. The very cry of distress is an involuntary appeal to 



164 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEW] 

that invisible Power whose aid the soul invokes. . . . Prayer has a right 
to the word " ineffable." It is an hour of outpourings which words can- 
not express, of that interior speech which we do not articulate even 
when we employ it. — Anna S. S. Swetchin. 

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever 
be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. — Victor Ifago. 

Prayer is the wing wherewith the soul flies to heaven, and medita- 
tion the eye wherewith we see God. — St. Ambrose. 

In prayer, it is better to have a heart without 11 
without a heart. — fokn Bunvan. 

Prayer is the & re desire, 

James Montgomery. 

The Christian life is a long and continual tendency of our hearts 
toward that eternal goodness which 
ness consists in thirsting for it 

desire to approach your Creator, a: .sill never < prav. 

Do not think it is necessary to ice many words, — Arch 

F?-ancis de S. Fend on. 

Prayer is not eloquence, but earn- the dcfin : tion of 

lessness, but the feeling of it ; not figures of speech. 

of soul. — Hannah More. 

Prayer among men i to change the pers 

whom we pray : prayer tod 
receive the things prayed for.— 

At • ht : 

Could I bul 

law 

And let m 

And realize my fa 
Bui 

And dai 

And next i 

That I n 
With firm, uni 

To 
That I might m 

irt, 
But mar! 

And reach t! part. 

But God was kind 
And here. 

And then I asked for faith : 

Could I but trust 
I'd live in b< •.•■ 

Though f Jl abroad. 



ASPIRATION 165 

His light thus shining round, 

No faltering should I know; 
And faith in heaven above 

Would make a heaven below. 
But God was kinder than my prayer, 
And doubts beset me everywhere. 

And now I pray for love, 

Deep love to God and man, — 
A love *hat will not fail, 

However dark his plan ; 
That sees all life in him, 

Rejoicing in his power, 
And faithful, though the darkest clouds 

Of gloom and doubt may lower. 
And God is kinder than my prayer : 
Love fills and blesses everywhere. 

Ednah D. Cheney (Riverside Record), 

I cannot find thee. Even when, most adoring, 

Before thy shrine I bend in lowliest prayer ; 
Beyond these bounds of thought, my thought, upsoaring, 

From furthest quest comes back : thou art not there. 

Yet high above the limits of my seeing, 

And folded far within the inmost heart, 
And deep below the deeps of conscious being, 

Thy splendor shineth : there, O God, thou art. 

I cannot lose thee. Still in thee abiding, 

The end is clear, how wide soe'er I roam : 
The law that holds the worlds my steps is guiding, 

And I must rest at last in thee, mv home.* 

Eliza Scudder {H. and T. B.for C. and H., 278). 

Deep unto deep may call, but I 

With peaceful heart can say, 
Thy loving-kindness hath a charge 

No waves can take away : 
Then let the storm that speeds me home 

Deal with me as it may. 

Anna L. Waring. 

O thou, who art the secret source 

That rises in each soul, 
Thou art the ocean too, — thy charm, 

That ever-deepening roll. 

William C. Gannett. 

* See lines from Derzhavin's " Ode to God," chap, xliii., post. 



Chapter XXXI. 



ALL KVIA I [ON. 



What Two Views of the Curative M is to 

Minds ant 

(i) That the cures were wholly supernatural. (2) That they 
were entirely natural, or at least merely patera that 

the record thereof was mack ated oral n.t 

Thus, for instance, the little daught ^irus was only 

comatose condition,— " not dead, but s! lp at 

the tender, familiar tones of her friend, M Talitha, cumi 
"My pet lamb, rise up 

There are modern cases of I rile and nervous a: 

tions amenable to control by moral power ; y the 

ascendency of any one commanding the patient 
any agency that arouses his own dormant ei 
At the Faith Convention 
several persons testified to ha\ 

faith." And, in a sermon on " Fail 1 at of the 

wife of Rev. S. L. Gracey, after prayer 1 
Wi throw mentions the case of a friend who had 1 
agonies under sciatica, to whom a friend 

uttering the words in a tone of emphat ance. He pro- 

cured a lump of alum, and commanded the sufferer to put it into 
the pocket of his pants, and not to remove it, and he would cer- 
tainly have no more pain. Neither did he 1 
for years afterward. Another friend suffering from the - 
disease was confidently assured that thousands had been cured 
by placing a potato in the skirt pocket of the coat He c! 
and the pain vanished as by magic. T 

hysteria, imaginary pains that only tent to count 

himself free, and he would be. And surely there was nothing 
miraculous or medicinal in the manner of their cure. 

*In the sense adopted in Mr. A. Bronson A -vtrsmtm 



ALLEVIATION 1 67 

Dr. Benjamin Rush tells of an old man who for several years had 
suffered an annual attack of gout. He was lying in one of these 
paroxysms when his son accidentally drove the shaft of a wagon 
through the window of his room, making a terrible noise and smash- 
ing of glass. The sufferer leaped from his bed with the agility of 
a boy, forgetting either crutch or cane, which from that time on were 
not needed. ... A moral wretch may match the achievements of the 
most righteous man in making marvellous cures. No monarch, in the 
seven centuries that " the king's evil " was cured by the royal touch, 
equalled the perfidious and profligate Charles II. A full hundred 
thousand patients are said to have come under his hand. — Dr. J. L. 
Withrow [Golden Ride, Sept. 30, 1882). 

Dr. William A. Hammond publishes the case of a Catholic 
patient, who for many months had suffered from a distressing 
spasmodic affection of certain muscles of her neck. One 
morning, she expressed regret at being unable to go to Lourdes. 
He told her that he had some of the water of Lourdes, and 
another water which had produced marvellous results, and in 
his opinion was preferable to the other. This last was called 
Aqua Crotoiiis. Both were at her service, but she was 
strongly advised to use the latter. She evinced the greatest 
joy, and begged hard for the water of Lourdes, but consented 
to try the Croton water first. The genuine Lourdes water was 
given her, labelled Aqua Crotoiiis. This was rubbed on the 
affected part vigorously for two days, with no result. Croton 
water was then given her, labelled " Water of Lourdes, Feast of 
the Annunciation, 1S79." The patient received it about 11 A.M. 
At half-past one, she rushed into the consulting room, exclaim- 
ing, " I am cured! I am cured ! See what the Holy Virgin has 
done for me ! " And she was cured. The contracted muscles 
were relaxed, and she could turn her head as well as ever. 

Similar was the case of a sick German Protestant at Wash- 
ington, whose husband, on viewing the remains of President 
Garfield at the Capitol, picked from the wreath presented by 
Queen Victoria a loosened flower, thinking it a partially opened 
tuberose. He put it in water by her bedside, and it blossomed 
out, disclosing the form of a dove in the centre. It seemed 
miraculous to her, as she did not know there was such a flower 
(the flower of the Holy Spirit). She began to mend from the 
moment she saw it, calling it the Christ flower, sent from the 
dead President's bier to heal her. Where the disease was 
regarded as the effect of demoniacal possession, the sufferer's 
belief that Jesus had some secret means of cure, or was 
especially favored by God with power of casting out the devil, 
would act as a strong ally to that sense of moral power and 



l68 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

"authority'' which his commanding presence inspired. And 
this, too, whether Jesus merely addressed the supposed demons 
in accordance with the needs of the patients, or was himself 
so far a child of the times as to attribute their sufferings to 
actual evil spirits dwelling in them. 

Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, once gave a laborer a pre- 
scription, saying, " Take that, and come back in a fortnight, 
when you will be well.'' The patient came at the fortnight's 
end, with a clean tongue and happy face : he had made a pill 
of the paper, and faith in his physician's skill had done the rest 

In the case of the pre-natal crotalus bite already mentioned,* 
the physician remarks that occasionally a girl gets hysterical 
and " begins to play all sorts of pranks, — to Tie and cheat, 
perhaps in the most unaccountable way, so that she might 
seem to a minister a good example of total depravity. We 
don't see her in that light. We give her iron and valerian, and 
get her on horseback if we can, and so expect to make her 
come all right again.'' 

On this and on cognate subjects upon which human science 
is yet in its creeping infancy, no intelligent student feels in any 
presumptuous mood of proffering very positive affirmation or 
denial. To predicate of man or of the lower animals i 
migratory birds the possession of a sixth s a mere 

alternative of convenience. M One thing is sur .-the, 

"under certain conditions, our soul, I \e of 

mysterious functions, has a greater power than reason : and the 
power is given it to antedate the future,— av, to see into the 
future." It is well authenticated that Swc en hun- 

dreds of miles from his Stockholm home. nscious 

conflagration there going on and imperilling his own h 
So, also, is well authenticated the phenomenon of mind r 
ing, as demonstrated by a Yale studen: also, 

that of the American girl who, when blindfold, reads a book 
printed in a foreign language. 

Of Stuart C. Cumberland, who in London. New York, 
Boston, and other cities, has given wonderful demonstrations 
in thought-reading, it is said : — 

He blindfolded himself, and taking Rev. H. W. Reecher bv the 
hand, asked him to think of some object in the room. When the 
clergyman said he had done so, Mr. Cumberland placed Mr. 
hand to his own forehead, and then, seeminglv in a tligfti ner- 

vous excitement, ran across the room and took the 
Dr. Meredith Clymer's nose. A t the same time. Mr. Beecher shouted. 

Ante, ci 



ALLEVIATION 1 69 

"Right." Then, the thought-reader was taken out of the room by 
Dr. G. M. Beard and Rev. G. H. Hepworth; while Mr. Beecher 
handed a small silver trinket to Dr. A. B. Ball, who concealed it in 
his shoe. Mr. Beecher also marked two tiny spots on different parts 
of the wall with a lead-pencil. Mr. Cumberland was then brought in, 
and, seizing the hand of the Plymouth pastor, he wandered about the 
room, stopped in front of Dr. Ball, and finally knelt down and took 
the trinket from the shoe. He also, while still blindfolded, put his 
finger upon the two spots upon the wall. — New York Herald, Nov. 
29, 1882. 

This power of Mr. Cumberland, Charles Foster, and others, 
has been by Dr. Crookes and other scientists attributed to 
induction. " The act of volition or of concentration of thought 
affects strongly the entire muscular and nervous system. To 
a person of acute mental perception, this excitement or mental 
impulse can be communicated by induction, exactly as the cur- 
rent passing along one telegraph or telephone wire will induce 
a similar current upon another wire running parallel with it." 

In this connection, some writers have adduced a theory con- 
cerning certain metaphysical phenomena in conversions at 
colored camp-meetings; and that of Paul. Sampson Stani- 
forth, a Methodist soldier in the campaign of Fontenay, relates 
his conversion in words which bear plainly marked on them 
the very stamp of good faith : — 

From twelve at night until two, it was my turn to stand sentinel at 
a dangerous post. I had a fellow sentinel, but I desired him to go 
away, which he willingly did. As soon as I was alone, I knelt down 
and determined not to rise, but to continue crying and wrestling with 
God till he should have mercy on me. How long I was in that agony 
I cannot tell ; but, as I looked up to heaven, I saw the clouds open 
exceedingly bright, and I saw Jesus hanging on the cross. At the 
same moment, these words were applied to my heart, "Thy sins are 
forgiven thee." All guilt was gone, and my soul was filled with 
unutterable peace. The fear of death and hell was vanished away. 
I was filled with wonder and astonishment. I closed my eyes, but 
the impression was still the same ; and for about ten weeks, while I 
was awake, let me be where I would, the same appearance was still 
before my eyes, and the same impression upon my heart, " Thy sins 
are forgiven thee." * 

It is often a phenomenon of an insanity in one direction that 
the mind is preternaturally keen in another. 

"Second sight" is a flag over disputed ground. But it is matter 
of knowledge that there are persons whose yearnings, conceptions 

* See St. Paul and Protestantism, by Dr. Matthew Arnold ; also Visions : 
a Shidy of Pseudopia, by Dr. E. H. Clarke. 



170 RECORDS OF JESi IEWED 

— nay, travelled conclusions — continually take the form of images 
which have a foreshadowing p >wer : the deed they would do starts 
up before them in complete shape, making a coercive type; the event 
they hunger for or dread rises into vision with a reed-like gr 
feeding itself fast on unnumbered impressions. They are not a 
the less capable of the argumentative process, nor less sane than the 
commonplace calculators of the market. Sometimes it may be that 
their natures have manifold openings, like the hundred-gatea Thebes, 
where there may naturally be a greater and more miscellaneous 
inrush than through a narrow, beadle-watched portal. — George Eliot 
{Daniel Deronda). 

So, too, as to cases of "unconscious cerebration.'' The 
wonderful movements of some somnambulists are well attested, 
reminding us of the delicate feats < ition, 

or of the wingings of a bat, eluding an inter rk of 

wires in a darkened room, Buni, kitel . smeric e 

bitions in the larger cities of Hind' said, invites the 

public to bring thereto ferocious v. •• karey, 

the horse-tamer," Buni "holds them with 
In a few seconds, they subside into a co; 
stiffness, from which they can on! 
which he solemnly executes with his v\ 
violent state of irritation was brought I 
proprietor, enclosed in a wooden 

platform, it was writhing and hissing fiercely. I over 

the cage and fixed his eyes upon i 
his hand over the serpent's 

minute, the snake stretched itself out, stiffened, a: 
ently dead. Buni took it up and thrust 
body, but it gave no sign of a;. 
savage dog, held in a leash by its 'own 

at Buni's command let loose upon fa He 

raised his hand, and in a second the fierce I upon 

its belly as though stricken by lightning. It seemed a 
lutely paralyzed by some unknown .s unabl 

move a muscle until released from the magnetizer's si 
majestic wave of his hand. ' 

The patient's intercourse with Jesus appear- 
a matter of instantaneous recognition and svm This 

would not be uncommon. Nothing is truer than nark 

of Alexander Knox f that, "in this frail and corrupt worl 

*See two papers by Mrs. A. H. Leon, ;e Youth's Cmm*mui*n t Decem- 

ber, i8Sa , concernm* the N ou, 
T In Southey's Lift of John 



ALLEVIATION 171 

sometimes meet persons who in their very mien and aspect, as 
well as in the whole habit of life, manifest such a signature 
and stamp of virtue as to make our judgment of them a matter 
of intuition rather than the result of continued examination. " 
Dr. Thomas Chalmers calls it "a beauty of holiness which 
effloresces on the countenance, the manner and the outward: 
path." 

It is recorded that occasionally there was, however, a. 
failure to heal " because of their unbelief." 

The deaf may hear the Saviour's voice, 

The fettered tongue its chain may break; 
But the deaf heart, the dumb by choice, 

The laggard soul that will not wake, 
The guilt that scorns to be forgiven, — 
These baffle e'en the spells of heaven. 
In thought of these, his brows benign 
Not e'en in healing cloudless shine. 

Come while the blossoms of thy years are brightest, 

Thou youthful wanderer in a flowery maze ; 
Come, while the restless heart is bounding lightest, 

And joy's pure sunbeams tremble in thy ways ; 
Come, while sweet thoughts, like summer buds unfolding, 

Waken rich feelings in the careless breast; 
While yet thy hand the ephemeral wreath is holding, 

Come and secure interminable rest. 

Soon will the fresh' ess of thy days be over, 

And thy free buoyancy of soul be flown ; 
Pleasure will fold her wing, and friend and lover 

Will to the embraces of the worm have gone ; 
Those who now love thee will have passed forever, — 

Their looks of kindness will be lost to thee : 
Thou wilt need balm to heal thy spirit's fever, 

As thy sick heart broods over years to be. 

Willis Gay lord Clark {Literary Remains, p. 438^. 



Chapter XXXII. 

TRANSFIGURATION". 

What Three Views concerning the Transfiguration f 

(i) That there was a supernatural occurrence, literally as 
described in Matt. xvii. and Mark ix. 

(2) That the scene is a mere allegory of the conception that 
the authority of the law and prophets must be supersede 
Moses and Elijah disappear, leaving Jesus -alone singled out 
as the son of God's good pleasure. 

(3) That the account is a traditional exaggeration of a 
precious interview between Jesus, Peter, John, and James, — 
the latter perhaps a brother of Jesus that had taken the place 
of a deceased son of Zebedee. 

"We are shaped and fashioned, *' says Goethe, ''by what we 
love." These three are not the only disciples, who, when once 
on the height of lofty communion with the True, the Beautiful, 
and the Good, fondly linger and yearn to ''abide'' there for- 
ever, nevermore to descend to life's petty, hampering, common- 
place concerns; who have to be reminded that there are other 
elements of our spiritual nature demanding a fair chance for 
symmetrical development; that it is only required of us that 
we be faithful to the pattern shown us up there. Apprehen- 
sion — comprehension — of the upward often comes of appre- 
hensiveness of the downward. 

The most difficult thing in life is to keep the heights which the 
has reached. — David Riddle, Jr. 



And looks commercing with die 
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine ej 

Thyself amid the silence clear, 
The world far off and dim : 

Thy vision free, the Bright One near, 
Thyself alone with him. 






Is it entirely fanciful to believe that these favored disciples 
then and there began to see the world as Jesus saw it ? There 



TRANSFIGURATION 173 

is an Arabian proverb, " Get close to the seller of perfumes, if 
you want to be fragrant." John Bunyan says, " Old truths are 
new to us, if they come with the smell of heaven upon them." 
We know that everything became lovely as Jesus looked at it. 
God was a being of divine loveliness, — not a stern king or 
judge, as the Jews too often regarded him. Did he appear to 
these rapt contemplators a mere law of nature or order of the 
universe ? So science frequently regards him. Piety, what is 
it? A devout and advanced thinker, after adverting to the 
ceremonial, the emotional, the doctrinal, and other kinds of 
piety, says : — 

If these varieties of piety could be combined in one kind, omitting 
their defects, we should have the highest kind of all. If we could 
have a solemn awe and fear of sin and its consequences, as the basis 
of religion ; beautiful, harmonious rites and ceremonies, as the helps 
to piety ; the sympathy of human hearts, social meetings, brotherly 
fellowship, as the daily food of piety; and the broadest science 
brought into the Church instead of being left in the college, teaching 
us to see God in the majestic movements of the stars, in the delicate 
anatomy of the flower, in the molecular motions and forces of chem- 
ical atoms, in the long processes of geology, — by such a combination, 
we should have the highest piety of all.- This can only come through 
the piety taught us and given to us by Jesus Christ. Its essence is 
the life of God in the soul, personally communicated through Jesus, the 
providential mediator, and redeeming us by its power from all evil. 
It finds God within us as well as around us. It is childlike. The 
child is not in the least afraid of its parents, if they are what they ought 
to be ; but it looks up to them with reverence, and is afraid of offend- 
ing them. That is all the fear there is in it. . . . 

God in Christ is a loving order, a fatherly law, a personal friend, 
yet of unknown depth and height. He is serenely majestic as the 
central power in the universe, holding all worlds in the hollow of his 
hand. Yet he is inwardly present to the heart of his humblest 
child, whenever, in sincere prayer and penitence, his child opens his 
heart to him. . . . 

All the love we have learned in this world only needs to take a 
new direction to become divine love. The greatest scientific discov- 
ery of the present time is said to be that of the correlation and con- 
servation of forces. It means that there is one force underlying all 
forces, now taking one form, now another. It is now motion, then 
heat, then electricity, then magnetism, then chemical affinity. So in 
the spiritual world, all forces of the soul are the same, ana" he who 
has one can have the rest. Therefore it is that, in the New Testa- 
ment, faith is sometimes made the whole of religion, and sometimes 
hope is said to be the source of salvation, and sometimes we are told 
if we obey the Commandments we shall enter into life, and then we 
are taught that love is the fulfilling of the law. They are all one and 



174 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

the same. They take different forms according to the position of 
the soul. But who has really one has all. If a man can really trust 
•God, then he can obey him. If he can really obey, then he can be- 
lieve. If he can love his brother as himself, he can love God. If he 
can love God, then he can love his brother. — Dr. J. F. Clarke {Com- 
mon Sense in Religion, pp. 281, ff.). 

The world's great altar stairs 
That slope through darkness up to God. 

I keep the holy faith in God, in man, 

And in the angels ministrant between; 

I hold to one true Church of all true souls, 

Whose churchly seal is neither bread nor wine, 

Nor laying on of hands, nor holy i 

But only the anointing of Gou 

Theodore Tilton. 

The Christian Church, — as old as the centuries and as young as 
the future. — Bulwer-Lytton. 

Mere of truth and more of m: J 
More of love and more of ligh 

re of reason and Sir John Botvring. 

In an Appendix, post, will be narrated one or two well- 
authenticated cases of death-bed transfiguration, not attrib- 
utable to any physiological derangeme jesting tfaa 
least figuratively, 

The discord that involveth 

Some startling change of k 
The % eth 

In richest harmony. 

Anon. {Youth's Com/amton, Feb. 

Cases where there seem to be gleamings from another world, 

and the spirit's dissolving tenement/ like the dungeon of 
Chillon, is momentarily lit up 

Dim with a dull imprisoned 1 
A sunbeam which hat 

Lor rorcU*H Byron. 

How sweetly did they float upon the w: 

Of silence, through the empty- vaulted nij 

At every fall smoothing ihe raven d 

Of darkness till it smiled ! John M 



Chapter XXXIII, 



AGGRESSION. 



What Three Views concerning Chris fs ejecting Traders from 
the Temple ; and What generally as to his Self -assertion or 
Aggression ? 

(i) That there was a miraculous feat, as described, Matt. 
xxi., Mark xi., Luke xix., John ii. ; "due," as St. Jerome says, 
" to the starry light which shone from his eyes> and to the 
divine majesty which beamed from his features." 

(2) That such success of one not very muscular man against 
a rough crowd was not miraculous, but simply due to the weak- 
ness, product of a guilty conscience, on the one side, and the 
grandeur of a supreme enthusiasm on the other. Dr. Geikie 
says that " all were under a spell for the moment. It was an 
act such as Matthias or Judas Maccabaeus might have done : 
and, prophet-like as it was, in such a place, and in such a cause, 
its unique heroism secured its triumph. Dr. J. F. Clarke 
imagines* that '-Jesus entered the Court of the Gentiles, 
accompanied by the great multitude, who had formed a tri- 
umphal procession around him. Indignation seized him when he 
saw the place of worship for the nations of the world treated 
with such contempt by the priesthood, who ought to have wel- 
comed the Gentiles to the worship of the one true God. The 
divine anger of the prophet of old seized him ; and, like as 
ancient seers spoke to the sight of men by outward actions, he 
took a whip and drove from the court these traffickers." 

(3) That the legend is a traditional exaggeration of the cir- 
cumstance that Jesus administered a rebuke to some one of the 
desecrators, who thereupon confessed conviction of error, and 
forthwith abandoned the business. Accordingly, that Jesus 
invariably exemplified his own precepts upon non-aggression; 
that in this, as well as in the rebuke administered to the 
hypocritical Pharisees, he " must be cruel only to be kind." 

*In The Legend of Thomas, called Didymus. 



i;6 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

There is a tradition that this was the view of Benjamin Franklin, 
But the tradition is hardly so well authenticated as his aphorism, 
" Christianity commands us to pass by injuries; policy, to let 
them pass by us." But as to just when and to what extent 
meekness is policy, there is a great contrariety of opinion. 



Those who bear misfortunes over-meekly 
Do but persuade mankind that they and want 
Are all too fitly matched to be disjoined, 
And so to it they leave them. 

Tender handed, stroke a nettle, 

And it stings you for your pains : 
Grasp it like a man of mettle, 

And it soft as silk rema: 
'Tis the same with common natur. 

Use 'em kindly, they rebel ; 
But be rough as nutmeg 

And the rogues obey 



Joanna B 



A arc: 



There is a nearly equal diversity of opinion as to the reasons 
for the peculiar entry into the city just before the ejection of 
the traders. 

Apparently, this triumphal entry was a spontaneous outburst of 
enthusiasm confined within narrow limits. It may be that ] 
hoped that these limits would extei d until they should compr> 
effective majority of the population of the it SO, perhaps 

without a struggle, the hierarchy would be overthrown and hi- 
kingdom set up in its place. It mav be he had spoken of * 
things with them so frequently that he allowed himself to think 
that his disciples were completely disabused of their materialistic 
notions of his Messiahship; but, from all that we can glean concern- 
ing them, we may be sure that they were not. Already they imagined 
themselves sitting on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of 
Israel. Jesus is made to promise them this honor in one of the « 
distortions of the New Testament tradition. It was their triumph 
quite as much as his own that thev were celebrating as the 
their garments in his way. — John IV. ChadwUk ( The Manjcsu 

The record of another instance of self-assertion savors more 
especially of dignity. Standing arraigned before the malignant, 
bigoted priests, Jesus gives them a rational answer, courteous. 
but not cringing. Some poor, pompous fool, u dressed in 
a little brief authority," imperiously hisses o that 

the way you answer a high priest?'*' and strikes him. Jesus 
makes no movement to repel the violence, but, fixing his 
clear and brave, but sad and sweetly pir. e full and square 

and immovable upon the leering features of the loathsome up- 
start, replies, " If I have answered in any wrong show 



AGGRESSION 1 77 

wherein''' Jesus pauses for an answer. Everybody's atten- 
tion is concentrated on the wincing, contemptible bully. In 
that long moment of silent suspense culminates the defeat of 
the ashamed assailant. Jesus clinches the lesson to the self- 
made culprit — yea, to the whole crowd of abashed claquers — 
with, " If there was nothing wrong in my answer, why did you 
strike me, sir ? " * This, uttered with a countenance more in 
sorrow than in anger, thenceforth in all the remaining years of 
that man's life was an ever present monitor that would not 
down. Too happy he if his heat-oppressed brain had, in its 
retrospect, the poor warder of one little memory, — that, instant 
upon the reproof, the parting glance of Jesus at the rash wretch 
was one of tender forgiveness. 

In dealing with a dolt, everybody — Jesus not excepted — 
must be justified in speaking incisively. Call it "showing 
spirit," if you please. Euphemisms would be wasted. " I love 
clamor," said Edmund Burke, " when there is an abuse. The 
alarm-bell disturbs the inhabitants, but saves them from being 
burnt in their beds." Of course, if it is a case where neither 
mild nor sharp words can avail, the only alternative is silence. 
Accordingly, the deportment of Jesus in the next two scenes 
cannot be called inconsistent therewith. Luke says f the com- 
pany then arose, took Jesus before Pilate, and charged him 
with having declared himself an anointed king \christon ba- 
siled]. Pilate asked him, " Art thou king of the Jews ? " Jesus 
answered, u Thou sayest." Pilate, finding no fault in him, and 
ascertaining he was a Galilean, and consequently of Herod's 
jurisdiction, sent him to Herod, who happened then to be stop- 
ping at Jerusalem. Herod had long wished to see Jesus : he 
hoped to see some sign [semeion] achieved by him. Herod 
questioned him in many words, but Jesus answered him nothing. 
The priests stood there vehemently accusing him. Herod with 
his soldiers set him at naught, mocked him, arrayed him in 
gorgeous apparel, and sent him back to Pilate. Pilate finally 
succumbed to the clamor for crucifixion. 

The proper discrimination — the right generalization to be 
deduced from the whole record of Christ's life — appears to be 
well summed up in Dr. Alexandre R. Vinet's aphorism : " Duty 
does not consist in suffering everything, but in suffering every- 
thing for duty. Sometimes, indeed, it is our duty not to suf- 
fer." It is a trite proverb that " He who puts up with insult 
invites injury " ; or, as Auguste Preault says, " To pardon an old 
injury is to invite a new one," — sometimes. Confucius asks, 

* John xviii. , 23 . t Luke xxiii. 



178 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

" If doing what ought to be done be made the first business, 
and success a secondary consideration, is not this the way to 
exalt virtue?" And Mary Lyon used to Say. " There is 
nothing in the universe that I fear, but that I shall not know 
my duty, or shall fail to do it." Dr. J. F. Clarke say< : — 

When resistance can do no good, when we have uttered our pro- 
test and it is ineffectual, then it is often more dignified to bear ex 
silence. Then our silence is perhaps the loudest protest. Jesus was 
patient in this way before the Jewish Sanhedrim, and his silence 
troubled them more than if he had spoken. M Why do not you an- 
swer?" said the high priest. "Do not fOU i. nen 
accuse you of?" Still he stood silent. Imagine the scene, 
enemies are around him; he is helpless in I 

witnesses to prove him guilt v of death. I the charges and 

makes no reply. His mind is far away. II ii 

not the haggard, stern faces of his enemi the 

witnesses. He sees, perhaps, his 

beauty among the hills; he sees the sec | where 

he first met God in the solitude and I the 

place where he knew first the great n- 

indifferent to what was passing around him, he stood in the 
of his own thoughts. What they cl hey 

meant to bring him to his < He had 

passed beyond all that, and 
shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth 
was not the passive, meek, unresisting patiei 

attribute to Jesus. It was the golden silence which spei ler 

than words. It told them that he knew that 1. already 

sealed, and that thev had already determined that he should die. 
"Why go through the form of a defence nothing to me: 

this is your affair." . . . 

True patience is not passive, but active. It ng pn. 

to be not weary in well doing, though there 

It is not to draw back or give up, but to persevere, whether men b 
or whether they forbear. It is — to use an old ne, 

though somewhat passed by— longanimity, which is 
magnanimity. Magnanimity is great 

and noble ends, rising above all things base and m onganitt 

is the persevering purpose which ke without rest and 

without haste, not making a pause nor leavii he purp 

is so strong that it is not disturbed by difficu errified bv dan- 

ger, nor chilled by neglect. It holds on. 1 of 

patience. — Common Sou* in Religion, \ - ,96. 

Men who their dur 
But know their rights, and, k 

Prevent the long-aimed b 

And crush the tyrant while they rend : 
These constitute a State. 

■ 



Chapter XXXIV. 



MINISTRATION. 



What is the Common Enumeration of the Miracles alleged in 
the Four Gospels to have been perfor?ned by Christ; and 
What the Present Different Leading Views of the Accounts 
thereof f 

Some commentators reckon only thirty miracles to be dis- 
tinctly set forth. They would identify Luke's draught of fishes 
with John's, would exclude from the category Luke's mention 
of the healing of Malchus' ear, and would consider the account 
in Matthew and Mark of a disappointing tig-tree as only set- 
ting forth a parable.* Ewald thinks there was but one feeding 
of the multitude.! Archbishop Richard Trench sets down 
thirty-three, and as occurring in the following order: — 

Making wine from water (John ii.). 

Curing a nobleman's son (John iv.). 

First draught of fishes (Luke v.). 

Stilling a tempest (Matt, viii., Mark iv., Luke viii.). 

Curing a Gadarene lunatic (Matt, viii., Mark v., Luke viii.). 

Raising from death Jairus' daughter (Matt, ix., Mark v.). 

Curing a woman's issuance (Matt, ix., Mark v., Luke viii.) ; two 
Galilean blind men (Matt, ix.) ; a paralytic (Matt, ix., Mark ii., 
Luke v.) ; a Galilean leper (Matt, viii., Mark i., Luke v.) ; a centu- 
rion's servant (Matt, viii., Luke vii.) ; a Capernaum lunatic (Mark i., 
Luke iv.) ; and Peter's mother-in-law (Matt, viii., Mark i., Luke iv.). 

Raising from death a widow's son (Luke vii.). 

Curing a Bethesda invalid (John v.). 

Feeding 5,000 men, etc. (Matt, xiv., Mark vi., Luke ix., John vi.). 

Walking on water (Matt, xiv., Mark vi., Luke vi.). 

Curing a man born blind (John ix.) ; a man's withered hand (Matt, 
xii., Mark iii., Luke vi.); an infirm woman (Luke xiii.) ; a dropsical 
man (Luke xiv.) ; ten lepers (Luke xvii.) ; a Syro-Phoenician woman 
(Matt, xv., Mark vii.) ; and a deaf and dumb man (Mark vii.). 

Feeding 4,000 men, etc. (Matt, xv., Mark viii.). 

*See/>ost, chap. xxxv. t Life of Jesus Christ (Glover's translation, p. 198). 



l8o RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Curing a Bethsaida blind man (Mark viii.) ; and a boy (Matt, xvii., 
Mark ix., Luke ix.). 

Coin in a fish's mouth (Matt. xvii.). 

Raising Lazarus from death (John xi.). 

Curing two Jericho blind men (Matt, xx., Mark x., Luke xvii.). 

Withering a fig-tree (Matt, xxi., Mark xi.). i 

Curing Malchus' ear (Luke xxiL). 

Second draught of fishes (John xxi.). — Notes on the Miracles, etc. 

The principal different views concerning these accounts may 
perhaps be most conveniently considered in the following 
order : — 

(i) The " a priori" theory. God, says Spinoza, is immanent 
in nature and does not transcend it. He has made its laws so 
unchangeable and yet so elastic that they shall prove, under 
every circumstance and in every need, the adequate organs and 
servants of his will. He never contradicts himself : when he 
has once made a law, he is not such a victim of caprice as to 
violate it by a miracle.* 

(2) The "orthodox" theory. " The government of a world," 
says Carl A. Hase,f "actuated by human freedom, is only pos- 
sible by means of an inworking of divine freedom. This in- 
working gives us the philosophical notion of a miracle, which 
therefore can only be denied with the denial of Providence 
itself." Dr. Jonathan Edwards in substance declares that 
the Supreme Being is not so much a God of nature as a God 
of men; the world is chiefly a workshop for the making of 
men; a miracle is not disorder, but a new order; the shifting 
of order is not a makeshift of whim, but a condescension of 
grace to induce, as essential to a specific blessing, a belief in 
respect to a certain vicegerency, etc., indispensable to any 
effectual repairing of a jar that got into the machinery of the 
universe through the exigency of leaving man a free moral 
agent. That a change of order surprising to man is not dis- 
order may be illustrated by the aloe. The order of the devel- 
opment of the century plant is not established in ninety-nine 
years: the "miracle of bloom" in the hundredth year is no 
disorder. 

A miracle is a surprise, but to whom ? Xot to higher intelligences 
who see the interiors of nature and know what is about to be from 
the unbroken links of the ascending series; not to Him who fills 
those interiors with reality and floods them with his life ; but to us 
who see but one link of the chain, who are ignorant of the long line 
of antecedents, and who stand where the result first breaks upon 

* See Theodore Parker's sermon, " Theism. " t Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, § 1 50. 



MINISTRATION l8l 

human sight. — Edmund H, Sears {The Fourth Gospel the Heart of 
Christ, p. 21). 

(3) A " tf «dU7-orthodox " theory is that the alleged wonders 
were merely relative miracles, — miraculous only to those in 
regard of whom they were first done, — as when a savage be- 
lieves that a telescope has the power of bringing the far in- 
stantaneously near, or a tropic islander is informed by a 
trustworthy missionary that in a Northern clime the surface of 
a river has grown so hard that an elephant can safely walk 
thereon.* Schleiermacher avers that Jesus was able to evoke — 
as from nature's hidden recesses, from her inward sanctuary 
— powers which none other could. These facts, which seem 
exceptional, were deeply laid in the first constitution of the 
law, and, at a certain turning-point in the world's history, by 
the providence of God, who had arranged all things from the 
beginning of the world for the glory of his son, emerged at his 
bidding*. Dr. Furness would postulate, — Given a man of the 
character of Jesus, and miracles for him are just as natural as 
our ordinary occupations and works are for us. 

(4) The " Hume " theory is that the fact of any miracle is a 
case of conflicting evidence, — that of the testimony of narrators, 
and that of human experience ; that, in balancing the two, the 
only case in which the evidence for the miracle could be 
admitted as prevailing would be that in which the falseness or 
error of the attesting witnesses would be a greater miracle than 
the miracle which they affirm ; and that there is no case in 
which the evidence for any one miracle is able to outweigh the 
a priori evidence which is against all miracles. 

(5) The " Mill " theory is that, if the evidence produced is 
such that it is more likely that the set of observations and 
experiments upon which the law rests should have been inac- 
curately performed or inaccurately interpreted than that the 
evidence in question should be false, we may believe the evi- 
dence ; but then we must abandon the law. And since the law 
was received on what seemed a complete induction, it can only 
be rejected on evidence equivalent, as being inconsistent not 
with any number of approximate generalizations, but with some 
other and better established law of nature. The doctrine must 
prove the miracles, not the miracles the doctrine. St. Paul 
expressly warned the churches, if any one came to them working 
miracles, to observe what he taught, and, unless he preached 

*See some rather exceptional illustrations in Mr. J. T. Trowbridge's " Story of 
a Monomaniac," Coupon Bonds, and Other Stories, pp. 336, 348, 355. 



1 82 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Christ and him crucified, not to listen to the teaching. And 
Mr. Mill adds : — 

There is no reason, therefore, that timid Christians should shrink 
from accepting the logical canon of the Grounds of Disbelief. And it 
is not hazarding much to predict that a school which peremptorilv 
rejects all evidences of religion except such as, when relied upon 
exclusively, the canon in question irreversibly condemns, — which 
denies to mankind the right to judge of religious doctrine, and bids 
them depend on miracles as their sole guide, — must, in the present 
state of the human mind, inevitably fail in its attempt to put itself at 
the head of the religious feelings and convictions of this cou: 
whatever learning, argumentative skill, and even in many respc 
comprehensive views of human affairs its peculiar doctrines may be 
recommended to the acceptance of thinkers. — John St V//V 

Logic, Part II., chap, xx., "Ground 

Archbishop Trench reiterates the sam miracle 

does not prove the truth of a doctrine, or the div: 
him that brings it to pass. The doctrine mi: nd 

itself to the conscience as bein^ good.' 1 * And he ; 
careful to distinguish from the e Old 1 dleged 

miracles: the cleaving of the er, 

Josh, ill-, 14: of the earth, Num. 

11; fire from the sky, II. Kings i., 12; tire made harmk 
Dan. iii., 25 ; and beasts, vi.. 22 ; Jonah ii.. 10. As to the 
tian plagues, Dr. S. Davidson remarks tl 
account for all that appears miraculous therein t 

Similarly, Dr. Rufus P. Stebbina of 

Jonah — written after the captivity, and hree h 

dred years after Jonah lived —indicates, b. ibject a 

the manner of treatment, that it v el and 

the Dragon,"" Susannah," "Tobit," "Judith,'' and " Dank 
written to edify patriots. The writer did not intend h 
to believe saints endured just such 
van's are to believe that Christian was loci 
giant in a real castle, or had a hand-to-han 
or Mrs. Stowe's that an Undo Tom was whipped 
order of a Legree. Jesus would naturally 
allusion to Jonah, as we speak of Christian 'a- .ir. 

or of Uncle Tom, or of what ; did and said. 

hymn that Jona h (ii.. 1) "prayed unto the 1 .od out 

* Notes on the Miracles^ etc., 

t As to the alleged increase, in 4 went down to» 

iLgypt to 600,000 fighting men, implying an entire pop - , 

Encyclopedia Britannic* thereon. 

$See Christian Register. Oct 10. 



MINISTRATION 1 83 

of the iish's belly " is composed of scraps of poetry gathered 
From different psalms and strung together with little connec- 
tion or taste, the writer not being skilful enough to give even 
the right tenses not to betray the late origin of the composition, 
" Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.' 7 

Dr. Matthew Arnold remarks : — 

To engage in an a priori argument to prove that miracles are 
impossible against an adversary who argues a priori that they are 
possible, is the vainest labor in the world. . . . The human mind, as 
its experience widens, gets acquainted with the natural history of 
miracles; it sees how they arise, and slowly, but inevitably, puts them 
aside. — God and the Bible, p. 42 [72]. 

As to the familiar argument of Archbishop Butler,* — that 
there is no presumption from analogy against some opera- 
tions which we should now call miraculous, particularly none 
"against a revelation at the beginning of tne world," etc., — 
Vicar James B. Mozley thinks it "has not been interfered with 
by anything that science has brought to light since Butler's 
time." f 

But the vicar omits to define the exact scope of his use of 
the word "science." % 

Pertinent here comes a criticism by Mr. Tyndall : — 

Mr. Mozley says the death of Arius was not miraculous, because 
the coincidence of the death of a heresiarch taking place when it was 
peculiarly advantageous to the orthodox faith . . . was not such as to 
compel the inference of extraordinary divine agency; but it was a 
special providence, because it carried a reasonable appearance of it. 
The miracle of the Thundering Legion was a special " providence, but 
not a miracle, for the same reason, because the coincidence of an 
instantaneous fall of rain in answer to prayer carried some appear- 
ance, but not proof, of preternatural agency.". . . In other words, if a 
special providence could be proved to be a special providence, it 
would cease to be a special providence, and become a miracle. . . . 
But, instead of speaking of it as a doubtful miracle, he calls it " an 
invisible miracle." He speaks of the point of contact of supernatural 
power with the chain of causation being so high up as to be wholly 
or in part out of sight, whereas the essence of a special providence is 
the uncertainty whether there is any contact at all, either high or low. 
By the use of an incorrect term, however, a grave danger is avoided. 

* Analogy, etc., ii., chap. ii. 

t Bampton Lectures on Miracles (2d ed.), p. 313. 

$ See Dr. J. W. Draper's History of tlie Conflict between Religion and 
Science, F. D. Maurice's Claims of the Bible and of Science and Dr. Matthew 
Arnold's review thereof, and Last Essays on Church and Religion, chap, ii., "Bishop 
Butler and the Zeitgeist." 



1 84 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

For the idea of doubt, if kept systematically before the mind, would 
soon be fatal to the special providence as a means of edification. 
The term employed, on the contrary, invites and encourages the trust 
which is necessary to supplement the evidence. . . . Whenever the 
evidence of the miraculous seems incommensurate with the fact 
which it has to establish, or rather when the fact is so amazing that 
hardly any evidence is sufficient to establish it, he invokes " the 
affections." They must urge the reason to accept the conclusion from 
which unaided it recoils. The affections and emotions are eminently 
the court of appeal in matters of real religion, which is an affair of 
the heart ; but they are not, I submit, the court in which to weigh 
allegations regarding the credibility of physical facts. These mu 
judged by the dry light of the intellect alone, appeals to the affections 
being reserved for cases where moral elevation, and not historic 
viction, is the aim. It is, moreover, because the result, in the 
under consideration, is deemed desirable that the at: are called 

upon to back it. If undesirable, they would with equal right be 
called upon to act the other way. Even to the disciplined scientific 
mind, this would be a dangerous doctrine. . . . 

Mahometanism has lived and spread without miracles ; and to 
assert, in the face of this, that Christianity b 

miracles, is not more opposed to the | '.an to the 

common sense of mankind.— John Ty> 
Unscientific People, pp. 47, 50). 

In this connection must not be omitted Thomas Carlvle's 
illustration : — 

To the minnow, every cranny and pebble and quality and accident 
of its little native creek may have b But does the 

minnow understand the ocean tides and periodic currents, the t 
winds and monsoons and moon's eclipses, by all which the condition of 
its little creek is regulated and mav from time to time (unmiraculously 
enough) be quite overset and reversed ? Such a minnow is man 
creek this planet earth, his ocean the immeasurable all ; 
and periodic currents the mvsterious ience through 

aeons of aeons.— - Sartor Resartus, Book II., chap. viii. 

This last expression will recall another, but perhaps rather 
unpleasantly (lest unjustly), ironical utterance b) 1 nich, 

if not an admonition right in point, should here be excluded 
for " idiosyncrasy " : — 

The Builder of this universe was \\ 

He formed all souls, all sysl eta, particles. 

The plan he fonned his worlds and 

Was— Heavens ! — was thy small nine and thirty artic 

In applying to accounts of miracles the log 
Disbelief just referred to, one fact as to t. 



MINISTRATION 1 85 

experience concerning individual and national credulity must 
not escape consideration ; namely, the predominance of feeling 
over judgment, of fancy over reason ; or rather the tendency to 
seek a bit of reason as — to borrow a word from the apothecaries 
— a " medium " for swallowing marvels. A little gypsy girl, when 
asked why the lions did not eat up Daniel, answered, " I guess 
God told the lions that Daniel was not good to eat." A child 
never asks itself whether the chimney-flue is large enough to 
take in Santa Claus and his pack. "Grandmother says so" 
is proof enough. To every people, the sun has been a god ; 
each has its " folk-lore " ; to one or another there have been 
spirits of the earth, of the air, of the water, — angels, bargeists, 
boggarts, brownies, bug'ears, cat-witches, demigods, demons, 
devils, dryads, erl-kings, elves, fairies, fauns, gnomes, goblins, 
gorgons, hag-hurts, hamadryads, imps, kelpies, mermaids, naiads, 
nixies, nymphs, ogres, plutos, plutuses, pucks, quat-bringers, 
raven-rooks, satyrs, sprites, tritons, undines, voodists, warlocks, 
wizards, — indeed, as M. J. Savage remarks, "the whole uni- 
verse one wild, strange scene of phantasm." * Even the intel- 
lectual Kepler believed that the order of the motions of the 
heavenly bodies could only be explained on the supposition 
that an angel inhabited and guided each planet in its course. 
Even the eminent jurist, Sir Matthew Hale, honestly condemned 
to death certain persons as witches. 

At the trial of two widows of Lowestoft in Suffolk, named Rose 
Callender and Amy Duny, at Bury Saint Edmunds, at the spring 
assizes in 1664, on a charge of bewitching two children of Samuel Pacy, 
Sir Matthew Hale instructed the jury that witches do exist: "for, 
firstly, the Scriptures have affirmed so much; secondly, the wisdom 
of all nations hath provided laws against such persons, which is an 
argument of their confidence of such a crime." The sentence of death 
was executed. — See, in Dr. M. Arnold's Last Essays on Church and 
Religion, "A Psychological Parallel" 

If this could be true of the mental operations of the Chief 
Justice of the King's Bench, the author of The Pri7nitive 
Origination of Mankind considered and explained according to 
the Light of Nature, The History of the Pleas of the Crown, and 
Contemplations, Moral and Divine, etc., — shall we say that, as 
to the common people, — their loose habits of observation and 
narration, — Shakspere's averment is at all hyperbolical? — 



* Talks about Jesus, p. 27. 



l86 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

No natural exhalation in the sky, 
No scape of nature, no distempered day, 
No common wind, no customed event, 
But they will pluck away the natural cause, 
And call them meteors, prodigies, and rig 
Abortive presages and tongues of heaven. 

King- John, Act III., Scenes- 
No evil thing that walk^ bv i.'. \ 
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, 
Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid gl 
That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, 
No goblin or swart faery of til 
Hath hurtful power o'er Truth and Pur'- 



A thousand fa 
Begin to throng into my mei 
Of calling shapes 
And airy tongues, thai 

On sands, and shores, and 



John .'■ 



John .'■ 



The world has never had enough monitors like Fishei 
proclaiming that, in order ''to s man. we ought 

to know things that are in the ordinary not the un- 

accountable things that happen out of it" 

Every nation on earth affords ill <>f seeming in- 

ability to abandon some unreason:: aper- 

stition. Charles R. Mills, for i a quart I century 

a Presbyterian missionary in China, mentions a custom in 
Shantung of letting accumulate on th< 
u luck hillock " — in one inn, three feet high — of the di 
ings from the shoes, etc. This was to conciliate the "Yang," 
the force that has to do with life, light, warmth, prosperk 
against the "Yin," the opposite, — the I 

effeminate. When some Dutchman proposed to make the 
river Manzanares navigable to the Tagus, and that to Lisbon, 
the Council said if it had been the will - .: the r 

should be navigable, he would have made them so.* 

A people who are charmed by a horseshoe whim, who do 
not practise the decimal system of weights and measure^ 
give their children a decent orthography, and who levy on the 
chattels of widows and spinsters, but deny them su 
sentation as to expenditure of the tax, have i 
examples of senseless aversion to new and rational idea.-. Dr. 
Zabdiel Boylston introduced inoculation for the small-pox in 

*The London Telegraph announces that V 
maran, the Death Valley, and finds it as healthy as 
legends of death from the upas tree were w 



MINISTRATION 1 87 

Boston in 1721, and tried it at first on his son Thomas and 
other members of his family. The municipal government pro- 
hibited its practice, and the people would have torn him to 
pieces had he not retired from the city.* This was of a piece 
with a certain unreasoning bigotry : — 

Exclusion is in their mouths and supremacy in their hearts. These 
are the essence of sectarianism, call it by what denomination you 
will. — Lady Sidney Owenson Morgan. 

This recalls the conversation mentioned in the life of J. S^ 
Buckminster, that occurred many years ago, concerning a new, 
but now influential, sect. Said one, "Well, they do manage 
to set a fair example in their lives." u That is true," answered 
the other ; " but, do you know, I believe the devil helps them 
to do this, that we may be the more easily blinded to the dam- 
nable nature of their doctrines. " Isaac Pitman tells us that, 
not a half century ago, an English clergyman warned his 
hearers against " mesmerism, phrenology, and stenography." 
"All are bigots," says Margaret Fuller, "who limit the Divine 
within the boundaries of their present knowledge." Sadi Gul 
is generally conceded to have made a hit in his parable of 
Abraham's aged Parsee guest : " Abraham, for a hundred years 
hath the divine bounty flowed out to this man in sunshine 
and rain, in bread and life. Is it fit for thee to withhold thy 
hand from him, because his worship is not thine ? " 

Especially were the Jews, at the time of Jesus, given to all 
sorts of demonological whims concerning prodigies, exorcisms, 
amulets, and dreams, — so says an eminent scholar, Dr. John 
Lightfoot. Credat JudcBus, — " Let the Jew believe that ! " — 
was a Roman proverb. The gospel narratives bear the stamp 
of the spirit that prevailed, and show us the conditions with 
which the preaching of Christianity had to comply, or rather the 
price it had to pay in order to gain a hearing. Prodigies, it was 
imagined, were necessary to mark Jesus as the Christ. " Truly- 
thou art the Son of God ! " " Is not this the Son of David? " 
cry out the astounded multitudes ; and demons prove again and 
again that they are well aware of his dignity. One writer's words, 
" Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe," 
taken in connection with Paul's declaration, " The Jews require 
a sign," might be paraphrased, " The reason why the Jews 

^ * See Dr. J M. Jones' History of Inocidation, etc., passim. As to the cre- 
dulity of the ancient Mexicans, who divided the world's life into five ages with five 
successive suns, see Montaigne's Essays, iii., p. 207. As to African andTother super- 
stitions, seethe (iSSi) Index of (volumes of) Harfefs Magazine, p. 653. 



l88 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

never believed in Jesus was that they never saw him do 
expected signs and wonders." 

As to the credulity of a later age, ecclesiastical history says 
two hundred miracles of Ignatius Loyola were laid before the 
Pope when Loyola's canonization was in question, including 
walking in the air, raising the dead, etc. ; and that it was hardly 
less common for Francis Xavier to raise the dead than to heal 
the sick. St. Dunstan,* Cotton Mather, Salem, Boston Com- 
mon, — verb. sap. 

And as to the present day, there is much to remind of Goethe's 
aphorism, " Miracle is the pet child of Faith, *' if not also of 
Renan's remark, u A miracle was never wrought in the pres- 
ence of savans." In Ireland, as recently as the last famine 
there, we find — what ? 

... As usual, the new miracle was first perceived by a poor 
woman, in the shape of an apparition of the Vjigin, St. Joseph, and 
St. John, close to a Catholic church. Other women and children 
Tapidly began to see it, too; then the housekeeper of an archdeacon 
saw it ; and then the archdeacon himself saw it, — or something very 
like it. As soon as the fame of it got abroad, cripples and diseased 
persons began to come in, in great numbers, to get the benefit of it ; 
and now the restoration of sight to the blind, hearing to the d 
walking to the lame, by merely sitting round the church or in corv 
^vith it, has occurred so frequently that the individual cases have 
ceased to be reported. ... In no instance have they been efficac: 
upon any sceptic or Protestant.— The {X. 1 *, Marc: 

An apparition can be produced by a paint composed chiefly 
of sulphide of calcium, now used in some tunnel 

In studying the record of the resurrection, 1 we shall have 
occasion further to consider the subject of infectious visit 

The so-called liberal application of Mill's rule will be < 
sidered in the next chapter. 

* See Dickens' Child's History of Engl 

tAs to the optical illusion known at ' -frr'i 

Magazine, lv., p. S22 (November, 1877), a we 
<£>f the Conjurers." 

$Chap. xxxvi. 



Chapter XXXV. 



VERIFICATION. 



What is the Present Tendency of the Age in applying the 
Rule of Paul, "Make the Doctrine prove the Miracle" and 
the Converse Rule of Trench and Mill, that " No Miracle 
proves a Doctrine"? 

Neither to affirm nor deny the possibility of what is called 
a miracle ; to concede with Aristotle the averment of Agathon, 
that " it is a part of probability that many improbable things 
will happen " ; and merely to declare that u the burden of proof 
is on the affirmative," — that the proponent of an extraordinary 
allegation must support it by extraordinary proof. It were idle 
to ask such questions as, Why silent as to miracles of Christ 
is Philo, the learned Alexandrian Jew, born before Christ and 
surviving him; or Josephus, the learned Jew, born A.D. 37; 
or Paul ; or his co-worker Clement, who left a genuine Epistle ; 
or Ignatius, who died A.D. c. 107; or Pliny and Tacitus, 
though they mention Christ? Or whether the feeding of the 
multitude be not a reminiscence of II. Kings iv., 43 ? 

It is becoming the " Zeitgeist" the time-spirit of the Occident, 
to trace a truth-sense in every enunciation of the Orient ; to find 
God revealing himself most majestically in the apparently or- 
derly, — in the objective which accords rather than discords 
with the soul's subjective ideal of the True, the Beautiful, and 
the Good ; to enjoy the development of a blooming plant more 
than stories of fairies that passed over the earth and left flowers 
in their pathway. Mr. Lowell's prophet, on returning from the 
mountain whither he had gone in quest of a sign from God, 
meets his little daughter with an eoual sign and wonder in her 
hand, which, as he says, — 

Beside my very threshold 
She had plucked and brought to me. 

One fruit of this truth-seeking spirit is to discover a rich em- 
blematic significance in many of these wonder-accounts, or in 



190 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

their probable originals. The Orientals conveyed truth by 
concrete figures of speech, and not, like Occidental scholars, 
in ratiocinative, articulated abstractions. It would not be im- 
possible in the East for an oral picture-statement of the call- 
ing of four disciples who were fishermen to become, by shifts 
of coloring from one of its features to another, transformed in 
the lapse of half a century into the story of a miraculous draft 
of fishes. But, in this western world, such a transformation 
would of itself be a " miracle," even in the developments of 
the most enterprising pantomime troupe, or in the varied activi- 
ties of a sewing-circle. No less a supernaturalist than Arch- 
bishop Trench utilizes the fig-tree story for an apt moral : — 

Jesus did not attribute moral responsibilities to the tree when he 
smote it because of its unfruitfulness, but he did attribute to it a fitness 
for representing moral qualities. The tree vaunted it be in 

advance of all the other trees, challenged the pa iat he should 

come and refresh himself with its fruit. Vet, when the I epted 

its challenge and d^ew near, it proved to be but as the others, without 
fruit as they; for indeed, as the K 
had not yet arrived. The sin of Israel 8 

so much that they were without fn; much. 

Their true fruit would have been to own th :hout 

Christ could do nothing. — Notes on t 

The u improvement" of allee eat in 

the Strauss or Tubingen School. 'Many beautiful illustrations 

are given by the Dutch School. Thus Dr. Hoovkaas rem 

as to the Cana wine transmutation, that when t 

munity of God lamented to her that there v, 

ing left but the water of religious forms, he told her to fill the 

vessels of stone that stood aUiand to meet the requirements of 

Levitical purity, and the water was turned into wine. Instead 

of forms, he gave the spirit: for life accoi the law, he 

substituted that free love of God which is the life of t! 

The joy of the wedding-feast was now secure ; the kin-dom of 

God would win its way.* 

Again, Jesus, with the slenderest means at his commam: 
the souls of countless multitudes: this bread of the spirit 
increases when it is consumed, and increases still more • 
imparted to others.f And again, in a tempest, in the midst 
ot dire agitation and distress, Jesus was absolutely at 
How many storms broke loo se upon him in his 

• See The Bible for Learners, vol. iii. . 
dant otows P '" 149 ' ° r ' ^ Mih0U >0d ' the m ° re comrauni «'*d more abun- 



VERIFICATION , 191 

experiences and the frenzied indignation of others, — in the 
passionate opposition and dark schemes of his antagonists ! 
Yet, in the might of his faith in God, he maintained his own 
unruffled serenity, and quieted many a storm which the opposi- 
tion he met had raised in the bosoms of the terrified disciples. 

The pilot of the Galilean lake. John Milton. 

To the widow at Nain, to Jairus, to the sisters at Bethany, — 
in the house of mourning everywhere, — he sweetly whispered : 
" Weep not ! you shall see the dear departed again. This 
apparently final sleep shall be succeeded by a glorious waking." 
And another solacing thought may we think, that expressed by 
James R. Lowell : — 

With every anguish of our earthly part, 

The spirit's sight grows clearer. This was meant 

When Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay. 

Rather than to insist that a sign shall signify too much, it 
were better to " let well enough alone." * 

Back over the course which his fame had travelled came certain 
Pharisees from Jerusalem, apparently sent out to spy into his teach- 
ings and entrap him into dangerous^ admissions. They succeeded 
perfectly. From henceforth it was war to the knife. As if to gather 
up his energies for the encounter, Jesus betook himself beyond the 
borders of Galilee, into the vicinity of Tyre and Sidon. Returning 
to the lake shore, he found his enemies awaiting him with a new 
stratagem. They wanted a sign from heaven. Was not their want- 
ing it itself a sign that his cures of the possessed were too near akin 
to the cures of their own exorcists to pass with them for genuine 
miracles ? But these were all he had to offer ; and he did not offer 
these. If miracle had played the part in the economy of Jesus which 
modern Orthodoxy claims, there would have been no excuse for his 
not performing such a miracle as would have silenced every demur at 
his prophetic office. What he did was to blast the Pharisees, and, 
w T ith them, the pedlers in Christian evidences from that day to this, 
with the assertion, "A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh 
after a sign, but there shall no sign be given them." — J. W. Chadwick 
(The Man Jesus, p. 144). 

In further answer to the main question, it may be observed 
that the tendency of modern liberals is like that of a " more- 
or-less liberal," born A.D. 1483, who said: — 

I have seen two miracles lately. I looked up, and saw the clouds 
above me in the noontide; and they looked like the sea that was 
hanging over me ; and I could see no cord on which they were sus- 

*See, in the Commentaries of Paulus, ingenious harmonizations, of the constancy 
of nature with truths of Scripture. 



I92 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

pended, and yet they never fell. And then, when the noontide had 
gone and the midnight came, I looked again ; and there was the dome 
of heaven, and it was spangled with stars ; and I could see no pillars 
that held up the skies, and yet they never fell. Now, he that holds 
the stars up and moves the clouds in their course can do all things, 
and I trust him in the sight of these miracles. — Martin Luther, 

The life of Jesus was both supernatural and natural. It was nat- 
ural because it was a pure development of humanity, uncorrupted» 
undepraved, as God made it, and as he means it to be. It was super- 
natural as showing the perpetual presence in his soul of the higher 
world, the world of eternal truth and infinite goodness. — Dr. James 
F. Clarke (Bosto?t Sat. Ev. Gazette, March iS, 18S3). 

We may not climb the heavenly steeps 

To bring the Lord Christ down ; 
In vain we search the low 

For him no depths can dr 

Hush every lip, close every book,. 

The strife of tongues forbear: 
Why forward reach, or backward look, 

For love which clasps like 

In joy of inward peace, or sense 

Of sorrow over sin, 
He is his own best evide: 

His witness is within. 

No fable old, nor mythic lore, 

Nor dreams of bards and s< 
No dead fact stranded on the shore 

Of the oblivious years ; 

But warm, sweet, tender, even vet 

A present life is he, 
And faith has yet its Olivet, 

And love its Galilee. 

We faintly hear, we dimly 

In differing phrase we pray ; 
But, dim or clear, we own in Thee 

The Life, the Truth, the V 

John G. 



Chapter XXXVI, 



RESURRECTION. 



What Two Views concerning a Resurrection of the Body of 

Jesus ? 

(i) The supernatural: that, on the third day after the cruci- 
fixion, it became reanimate, and, after he had walked on earth 
nearly forty days, ascended into the sky. The " Acts of 
Pilate," * after stating the arraignment nearly as in Matthew, 
proceeds : " Then Pilate commanded Jesus to be brought 
before him and spake to him the following words : * Thine 
own nation hath charged thee as making thyself a king. 
Wherefore, I, Herod, sentence thee to be whipped, according 
to the laws of former governors, and that thou be first bound, 
then hanged upon a cross in that place where thou art now 
a prisoner ; and also two criminals with thee, Demas and 
Gestas.' " In the next chapter, the account of the crucifixion 
is given very much as in Matthew ; save, after stating that the 
soldiers cast lots and divided his garments, no mention is made 
of fulfilling any prophecy. The name of the soldier who 
inserted the spear is said to be Longinus. In chapter xiii., 
a soldier reports in a synagogue the earthquake, the rolling 
away of the stone from the sepulchre he was guarding, and the 
appearance of the angel, very much as in Matthew ; and Christ 
is stated to have appeared to Joseph of Arimathea. In chapter 
xiv., it is stated that Phineas, a priest, Ada, a schoolmaster, 
and Agens, a Levite, came from Galilee to Jerusalem and told 
the priests that Christ had been seen talking with the eleven 
disciples. 

Jacques Saurin thinks nobody doubts that the tomb was 
fastened after the interment, and that it was found vacant; and 
he adduces thence a dilemma, one horn of which is a theft (or 
a removal by Joseph) and the other the miracle. 

The Fourth of the Thirty-nine Articles declares " Christ did 

* A nte, chap. ii. 



I9 4 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with flesh, 
bones, and all things appertaining to man's nature; wherewith 
he ascended into Heaven," etc. It should, however, here be 
stated (as Rev. R. H. Newton has remarked of said Articles) 
that the American Episcopal Church " left them as no more 
part of the Prayer Book, save for the printer's binding, than 
the other general legislation of the General Convention." 

(2) The'rationalistic view is that there is no such external fact 
of history as the alleged post mortem materialization; that the 
resurrection is simply a form of belief assumed by the faith of 
Christ's surviving friends, and thus the whole is a chapter of 
their inner life and not of this outward life,— especially after 
fleeing in haste from the hostile Orthodoxy of Jerusalem to 
their own native land. For instance, the record says not that 
he rose from death or from the grave, but from " the dead," 
— that is, from the realms of the dead, the place where the 
majority of Jews, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, etc., believed 
the shades of the departed abide. Thus Virgil says of Turnus, 

Death's chill 
Unnerved the limbs, but the undying soul 
Sighed its contempt and flitted to the shades. * 

The apostles could not endure the thought that their Master 
was left in the abyss, a powerless shadow. They were convinced 
that he must be living in heaven in glory : and, as when thus 
waked to life there must be a body, the conclusion was inevi- 
table that he had risen from the realm of the shades. Perhaps 
there can be no better statement of the grounds of the latter 
view than that presented by Dr. I. Hooykaas : — 

The contradictions in the narratives themselves, though so great as 
to lay insuperable difficulties in the way of a literal interpretation, no 
longer surprise us when we know that we are dealing with a prod- 
uct of the religious imagination, gradually amplified and embellished 
by tradition. . . . No such place as Emmaus has been found within 
two leagues of Jerusalem. There is an Emmaus ( or Xicopolis ) at a 
distance of six or seven leagues from the City ot the Temple, but this 
cannot be the place intended. There is a bathing-place of the same 
name on the Sea of Gennesareth ; and this tempts us .to ask whether 
the scene was not originally laid in Galilee, — which really witnessed 
the reviving faith of the disciples, — and subsequently transferred to 
Jerusalem without change of names. Finally, we may note that Jesus 
appears in different places — to the two travellers and to Simon — at 
the same time. But, in spite of all these traces of composite origin, 
the background and general outline of the picture still furnish us with 

*Gov. John D. Long's translation 



RESURRECTION 1 95 

precious materials for retracing the origin of the belief of the disciples 
in the resurrection ; for we must never forget that a powerful imagina- 
tion, supported by the symbolical forms of expression then current, 
might well translate reminiscences into present facts, suspense or 
other emotions into external events. 

The friends of Jesus — so we read this story — were bitterly disap- 
pointed in their fairest hopes by the cross of Jesus. And yet they 
still regarded their Master as a mighty prophet, and their hearts and 
mouths still overflowed with him. And while they thought and spoke 
of him, — at one in burning love, but often widely severed in opinions 
and expectations, — Jesus himself came to them. Not the glorified 
Christ from heaven, but the Jesus they had known on earth. They 
did not perceive or did not notice it ; but he was there, drawn to 
their sides by the magic power of loving and reverent remembrances. 
He was with them, speaking to them, drawing out their thoughts, 
and then correcting and instructing them, until at last, in the light 
of the event, they began to understand his teaching of the last few 
weeks, so fruitless at the time. They saw how the Scripture pointed 
out, in many a special utterance and in the common lot of prophets, 
what the sad end must be, and how the temporal defeat would lead to 
victory and would win the Messianic crown. When rightly looked 
into, the Scripture was full of hints and predictions of the event. 
How could they be so slow of heart! They would fain prolong those 
moments of his presence, hardly realized in the life of reminiscence, — 
thev would not let him go. And then, as they lay down to meat 
and broke the bread, that symbolic action on the last evening of the 
Master's life started back into their minds, the impression of that last 
meeting was renewed. They remembered all he told them, and above 
all that clear announcement of his death and of his triumph [ " She 
poured this ointment on my body to prepare me for the burial," etc.] ; 
and then the scales fell from their eyes, he was the Promised One 
once more! And now he is gone from their bodily sight; but, hence- 
forth, nothing can disturb their faith. He is the Christ. He cannot 
be a prey to the realm of shades. He lives ! He will come again ! . . . 

Paul, in a letter to the community at Corinth, in the year 58 A.D., 
reminds them what he had told them a few years before, in accord- 
ance with what he himself had heard from eye-witnesses many years 
before, — not long after the death of Jesus. It was " that Christ died 
for the forgiveness of our sins, according to Scripture ; and was buried 
and was raised up the third day, according to the Scripture ; and 
appeared to Cephas (Peter), and afterwards to the Twelve. Then 
he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at once, most of 
whom are still living, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared 
to James, and afterwards to all the apostles, and last of all to me also." 

Now, on the assumption that it comes from the hand of Paul, this 
enumeration, which evidently aims at completeness, deserves our 
confidence ; for Paul would certainly take care to inform himself 
accurately in such a matter. In speaking of the " resurrection," he 
does not mean the reanimation of the body of Jesus ; and, indeed, he 



196 RECORDS OF JESl'S REVIEWED 

expressly excludes such a thought by ascribing to the Christ a glori- 
fied and spiritual body not made of flesh and blood. It is equally 
certain that he thinks of the Christ as having appeared from h/ 
and his ranking the appearance to himself — unquestionab. 
product of his own fervid imagination — as parallel with those which 
preceded it seems to indicate that they were all visions alike. And, 
indeed, the return to earth of one already dead and glorified, or the 
veritable apparition of a spirit, is a thing which far transcen : 
limits of credibility. The Israelites, though well aware of the d 
ence between a vision and something seen under ordinary cond : 
were yet firmly convinced that what they saw in the ecstasy 
vision had an objective reality corre>i to it It mav <K 

our attention also that in this iith in> 

the resurrection of Jesus by an a pture, and - 

quently confirms it by a reductio ad absurdum. In .he is 

more inclined to demonstrate thai I mutt have risen than to 

build upon adequate testimony to the ! 
the appearance to five hundred believ. 
culty; for, when we remember how inl 
favorable to visions somet: 

the whole of a numerous g believe them- 

selves to see the Master. Hisl fui 

striking of a number of people in 1 -xaltatio: 

ing one and the same image before the 

Peter is mentioned as tin rvent 

and excitable temperament, n hi^ de- 

ne had done to his beloved and his 

ance of forgiveness, might well throw him 
exaltation as might make him sec the form he 
him, with an expression ^i exalted 
ness, as a mighty incentive an 

But it ought to be mentioned tha mother 

preserved in our Gospels, it v. nthful f: 

who had seen Jesus die,— the I hless 

agony at the sepulchre,— to whom the 
that their Master had arisen. 

brought the proclamation to them (with bout theii 

Salome), and told them to carry the -reat news to the disciple- 
especially to Peter. In itself, this account 
other. The tried attachment and touching fidelity of th 
Jesus, working upon the more 
them eminently susceptible of such 
and it seems more probable that tradi: 
Peter for the women than that they should h 
tact, we find the women, in this version of th 
to take the glad news to Peter, and may fa: 
nrst indication of a feeling that gradually gave the | 



*Seea«te, chap, xxxiv., 



RESURRECTION" [97 

the apostle to the exclusion of the women. On the other hand, great 
doubt is thrown upon the whole picture of the women and their vision 
by its unhistorical setting, — representing Jerusalem as the locality, 
the Sunday morning as the time, and the empty tomb as the scene of 
the vision ; whereas, all these three traits are of much later origin. . . . 
The very fact that it was in Galilee the disciples saw the Master is 
itself a proof that ample time intervened to admit of the power of 
recollection bringing them completely under his influence again. The 
-uniform tradition as to the third day refers to the time of h>s leaving 
the realms of death for heaven, not to that of his appearance to his 
friends. It is perhaps an inference from Scripture, Hosea vi., 2, and 
perhaps grew out of an expression used by Jesus himself ; in either case, 
probably due to the misunderstanding of proverbial expression. . . . 

The fact that, after some of the disciples had in a state of transport 
seen Jesus, others were in doubt and were only subsequently swept 
down the stream of general conviction, appears to us a genuine his- 
torical trait, and never quite disappears from the later stories. 
Finally, we may observe that the provisional assumption of Jesus 
into heaven, where he would at once receive from God the office of 
Messah in anticipation of his return to earth, was needed to satisfy 
the demand of the disciples for their Master's complete restoration 
from the shame of his death upon the cross. . . . 

In general, we may be pretty sure that the oldest tradition, whether 
preserved in the Epistle to the Corinthians or in Matthew, knew 
nothing of any words pronounced by the risen Christ when he ap- 
peared. All these belong to the later transformations of the story, 
and form but one of many deviations and accretions. In fact, the 
original story is gradually disguised past all recognition. The 
appearances of Jesus are transferred to Jerusalem, obviously with the 
view of making the scene of the Messiah's defeat that of his restora- 
tion and triumph also; they are placed upon the third day, as taking 
place while Jesus passed on high from the shadow land; they are 
robbed of their true character, and become more and mote material, 
after the general manner of legends. A variety of special occasions, 
circumstances, and sayings were from time to time added, uncon- 
sciously or by design, till the whole was expanded into a second life 
upon earth of several weeks' duration.— The Bible for Learners, vol. 
iii., p. 466, ff. 

The morbid condition thus described will not seem quite im- 
possible to any one who has carefully studied J. Bastien-Le- 
page's great painting, " The Vision of Joan d'Arc." Coleridge 
once remarked that he had no doubt that Dr. Johnson saw the 
Cock- Lane ghost : he only doubted whether the ghost was there 
for him to see. 

The averment of Dr. Hooykaas, as to the contagiousness of 
this ideational state of mind of the bereaved and trembling 
friends of Jesus, reminds us of an incident at the burning of the 



I98 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Crystal Palace. Hundreds of persons watched for an hour the 
agonies of an escaped animal upon the roof ; but, all the time, 
the animal which they were pitying was safe, and what they 
saw was a piece of tin roofing shrivelled in the flames.* For 
explanation of some of the alleged discrepancies, reference 
may be had to the commentaries of Dr. Adam Clark, Matthew 
Henry, and others. Thus, Luke says Jesus '-vanished out of 
sight " of Cleopas and the other traveller, on the very day t 
of the resurrection ; in Act-, the ascension is placed forty 
after the resurrection. Matthew does not claim that any one 
witnessed the resurrection. An anu r el requests the women to 
go quickly and tell the disciples that Jesus is risen and "goeth 
before you into Galilee ; there shall ye see him." i Mark says, 
" Neither said they anything to any man,'* i.e.. any stra 
they might happen to meet. ^ As to this alleged angel, k 
been remarked : — 

That God should send an angel to hasten the disciples to Galilee to 
meet Jesus there, and that afterward they should see him in Je 
lem, gives God the appearance of a person who does not know his 
own mind, or the angel the appearance of not being well informed. 
This story must have been current in circles where an appearance in 
Jerusalem was no part of the tradition. . . . An angel i: 
sure a proof that the story is a legend as a trout in the milk that the 
milk has suffered from adulteration. The angel causes an earth<; 
A very little knowledge of the nature of an earthquake is 
discredit this one, mentioned only by Matthew. prop- 

erties" earthquakes particularly abound. He introduces one at the 
moment of Jesus' death, in the 00 were 

opened, and many bodies of the saints which and went 

into Jerusalem and were seen by many"; but th 
mention afty such occurrence, though it cientlv impressive for 

a passing word. The guard at the tomb is another trait pecul 
the First Gospel. It was evidently placed there ideallv, to rebut any 
charge that the body of Jesus was secretlv remove.: pies, 

not actually to prevent such removal. That Pila: 
Roman guard for such a purpose is incredible; that the \ 
please the Sanhedrim, would risk their live nig ^that they 

fell asleep, is unspeakably absurd. The account - the 

question, What was the need of an earthquake to roll awav the - 
when Jesus was alreadv risen? — /. H \sus, 

p. 201). 

The story of the deputation of priests to the procurator, the 
sealing of the tomb, the apparition, the Might and bribing of the 

* As to apparitions, etc., see ante, d 13. 

+ Matt. xxviii., 7. £ M.- 



RESURRECTION 1 99 

sentinels, as worked out elaborately in the " Gospel of Nico- 
demus," Dr. Hooykaas deems to be quite absurd. " Is it," he 
asks, " likely that the enemies of Jesus would have heard a 
prophesy of his rising again when his very friends never 
dreamed of it for a moment, and when he had never once 
spoken of his resurrection in public ? Is not the conduct here 
ascribed to the councillors and the soldiers — the latter of 
whom would have needlessly exposed themselves to the heaviest 
punishment — so clumsy and childish as to be impossible ? 
But once set aside these difficulties and accept the picture as 
emblematic, and how fine and true its strokes appear ! " 

The powers of Church and State have combined against the 
Nazarene and brought him to his fall. On the one side, the 
high priests and Pharisees defending the Law, the temple, and 
last, not least, their own authority and influence, against the 
sacrilegious blows of this seducer of the people ; on the other 
side, the procurator, who cherishes no personal hostility to him, 
but overcomes his own indifferent toleration, and sacrifices the 
Nazarene in the interests of order. The new religious move- 
ment is crushed forever by this combination. Both Church and 
State combine to keep it down. The one puts its seal upon 
the stone, the other sets its watch before the grave, — in vain! 
As by the finger of God the seal is broken and the watch is 
smitten down. Jesus stands up ! Though hurled to the ground, 
he rises again : his momentary defeat was but a step to his 
abiding triumph. The alliance of ecclesiastical and civil 
authorities is powerless against the truth, against the kingdom 
of God, against the Christ. The triumph is his. It has its 
witnesses in every age, in our age, in our hearts, whenever the 
principles of Jesus vanquish the obstinate resistance of routine 
and prejudice, of impurity and selfishness ; whenever his ideal 
conquers the commonplace reality. Of this triumph, every 
Easter that Christians observe is the grateful record and "the 
joyful promise." In this the truest sense, " Christ has arisen ' 7 
indeed ! 

Another lesson in the premises has most eloquently been set 
forth by Mr. Chad wick : — 

There was another burial of Jesus than that in the fresh rock- 
hewn sepulchre of the New Testament tradition. It was in a tomb 
where thousands were already buried, — buried alive under the forms 
and ceremonies of an effete Religion. Into this tomb, the friends of 
Jesus, the apostles, and the brothers who, in his lifetime, had given 
him no countenance, made haste to carry him ; not his emaciated 
form, not his nail-wounded flesh, but the real man, — his thought, his 
spirit. But from this burial of Jesus there was indeed a resurrection j 



200 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

and the angel who rolled away the stone of the sepulchre was no 
supernatural being, with his countenance like lightning, and his rai- 
ment white as snow. No ! but a man who, according to his own 
description, was "in bodily presence weak, and in speech contempt- 
ible." Nevertheless there was that in him which was sufficient for the 
burden that was laid upon him. With mighty, ringing strokes, he 
hewed his way through manifold obstructions, straight to the spirit of 
Jesus, — his inmost thought and life, — and bade it rise up and come 
forth ; and even so it did. And Christianity, that might else have been 
a Jewish sect, losing itself in arid wastes of pedantry and ritual after 
a few generations, entered upon a career of universal influence. This 
was the real resurrection of Jesus, the triumph of fa tial spirit 

over the Judaizing narrowness of the Church of the Ap .ind it 

was a resurrection of infinitely greater significance than any impn- 
resuscitation of his mortal body. And Paul of Tarsus, the man through 
whom it was accomplished, was of such mind and heart am 
that, in comparison with him, all bent with toil and scarred 
battle though he was, the dazzling brightness -of any legendary angel 
is "no light, but rather darkness visible." — John' White Cnadwick 
( The Man Jesas, p. 221). 

The emotions of the faithful women ha jested still 

another lesson : — 

And like them, too, I am troubled 

As I tread my way al< 
While my faithless hindering 

Who will roll away the stone. 
Stones are lying in the ; 

Duty tells me I must tread,— 
Hope and loi 

With a stone at loot and W 
But there cometh a glad mon 

When all stones shall roll aw 
And the spirit rise triumphant 

Into God's eternal day. 



A »;.'•». 



In the grave, yet not to earth, 

Wholly sink heroic I 
While the menu 

In the heart of man 
with joy 1 
Rise triumphant froi 

Rise again to - 
Spirit of immortal tr 

Breath of truth and 



Setk C. B, 



Chapter XXXVII. 



ELECTION. 



What Two Views as to " Divine Election and Fore-ordination" 
and the Teachings of Christ and Paul thereon t 

(i) The Calvinistic : that God, being absolute sovereign, has 
from the beginning predestined some angels and men to eternal 
life and joy, and fore-ordained others to everlasting death and 
punishment.* 

(2) The Free-will view : that election and predestination are 
only temporal ; that this is the meaning in each of the places 
where Paul uses the word [pro-orizo ] ; f that both in the 
physical and moral universe there is an eternal reign of law, in 
one sense without variableness or shadow of turning ; and that, 
in Paul's argument, % God's showing his " wrath " means his 
letting the evil consequences of sin be made known. 

The evolutional phase of the latter view is that we are what 
we are because the universe is what it is ; if it acts upon us, 
we react upon it. Thus Herbert Spencer has denned life to 
be "the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both 
simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external 
coexistence and sequences." The hypothesis of evolution in 
its scientific aspect presents three factors, — heredity, environ- 
ment, and adaptation. By heredity is meant the tendency of 
our organism to develop in the likeness of its progenitor; by 
environment, the sum total of the physical conditions by which 
the developing organism is surrounded, — the ambient world ; 
and by adaptation, the disposition so to modify as to bring an 
organism and its environment into harmony. This may be 
accomplished either by progression or retrogression. 

Mr. Spencer elsewhere defines evolution as " a change from 
an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to. a definite, coherent 
heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integra- 
tions." 

*As to the " Supralapsarian " and " Infralapsarian " Calvinistic views, see 
ante, chap. xix. 

t Rom. viii., 29, 30; I. Cor. ii., 7; Eph. i., 5, 11. X Rom. ix., 22. 



2Q2 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

How happened it that, amid the grotesque myths which were the 
current beliefs of antiquity, this one clear, authoritative assertion of 
creation by law sprang up and maintained itself in Israel? II 
happened it that the doctrine of an ascending order of life was put 
into the religious primer of Israel ? How did it come to pass that a 
Jewish patriarch and lawgiver krew to some extent the fact of the 
orderly development, "the increasing differentiation," the progress 
from type to type, and to ever higher forms of the creation? And 
that, too, centuries before the accumulated results of the laws of 
heredity in the brain of a Herbert Spencer had recorded themselves, 
through his physiological organization, and for the wonder of a late 
age, in his First Principles. — Dr. Newman Sm in 

New Light, p. 171). 

Attach what weight we may to the physical causes which have 
brought about this evolution, I cannot see how it is possible 
ceive of any but a moral cause for the endowments that made the 
primordial germ susceptible of their ac: led 

laws of organic evolution, I see nothing but the orderh 
working out of the original intellig £. 

Carpenter, F.R.S. {Modern R - 

As Rev. W. R. Alger has remarked, M Man n g on the 

earth is a focalizing epitome of the tv; sraic for 

play has produced the entire serk \ from t] 

reactionary molecule or simp! lent thing up to the per- 

fected human organism which is in d uni- 

verse." Thus much as to physical evolutional u* 

So, not inaptly, did Paul say the : nould one lump 

of clay to humbler uses than another. A \ 
the operation of the like law in the moral w 
Dr. J. F. Clarke, in his tenth discourse on the " Ideas of 
Paul " : — 

Here are two brothers; we will call them Esau Brown and Jacob 
Brown. When they were b 

he did not learn his lessons very well, but he w ite 

with the other boys. He often got them int 1 rer 

betrayed them. He honestlv owned 

himself. He was a great plague at home, and his m »ther d 
love him as much as she loved 

help her about the house; he was thoughtful and ... "He 

brought his mother little presents on her birthday; bu 
lie loved her, never remembered to do anyth 
used to trade with his companions, and had a 
dollars and amies. At last, as thev grew to be young me: 
into a serious scrape, and his father scold ed him sevc 

ruiT^^jp* 6 ! ^ L J~ Savage's R< u/iom, Aissim: also Dr. John 

Clelaad s Evolution, Expression, an ' * uo aHk JOQD 



ELECTION 203 

concluded to go West, but had no money to go with. Then Jacob 
offered to give him two hundred dollars, if Esau would sign away his 
share in their father's property ; and he did so. 

Jacob Brown went into business, and became a prosperous man, 
and, when he died, left half a million dollars to the Hospital for 
Women and Children. Esau Brown moved from Ohio to Iowa, from 
Iowa to California, and from California to Oregon, and never seemed 
to accomplish much in any place; and, when he died, he left his 
widow and children to the care of his brother, who, I am glad to say, 
made them comfortable. So people said, "What a mysterious provi- 
dence that the Lord should have done so much better for Jacob 
Brown than for Esau Brown, when, really, Esau was as good-hearted 
a man as you ever saw, and Jacob was a little close." And Rev^ 
Moses Gilead, preaching the funeral sermon, took his text from the 
first chapter of Malachi, second verse, — "Was not Esau Jacob's 
brother ? saith the Lord ; yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau, and 
laid his heritage waste." But the real truth of the matter was that 
Jacob Brown was prosperous, not because he was good, but because 
he was prudent, industrious, economical, and had good business 
habits. The Lord did not really love him more than he loved his 
brother. The Lord did not elect him to everlasting life in the other 
world, but he elected him to be the man to endow the Women's 
Hospital in this world; and to be able to do that was something. 

Just so the Lord elected the Patriarch Jacob and his descendants, 
the Jews, to establish the doctrine of Monotheism in the world. He 
elected them to teach mankind faith in God as a Ruler, Judge, and 
Personal Providence. The Jews were like their father Jacob. They 
inherited from him his undoubting faith in one God, his God, and the 
God of his children. They inherited his pacific habit, his tendency 
to trade rather than to war, his tenacity to his convictions, his sagac- 
ity, and knowledge of men. Therefore, they were the right people to 
receive and preserve the Mosaic Law, and that has been their busi- 
ness in the world. They were the chosen people; chosen for that 
because their character fitted them for that. They were not chosen 
to possess an exclusive heaven hereafter, but to do a special work 
here. They were chosen, elected, predestinated for that work when 
they were born and before they were born. They were chosen when 
thev were so constituted as to be the right persons to do the work. 
When the Lord made them so, he chose them. Their election and 
calling was written in their organization, in the shape of their brains, 
and the temper of their character, — Boston Saturday Eveni?ig Gazette, 
April 9, 1 88 1. 

And it is in the nature of things that brain shall conquer 
brawn. This common-sense view seems best for mere mortals^ 
who cannot afford to waste time in coming to the result o£ 
Milton's angels, who on a hill apart discoursed 

Of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, 
And found no end in wandering mazes lost. 



Chapter XXXVIII. 

REDEMPTH) X. 

What Two Views of Redemption of the Soul from Consequt 

of Sir. 

(i) The intercessional, and (2) the evolutional. 

The former particularly emphas tial thereto, 

repentance, intercession, "justification by faith" in and reliance 
upon a certain " plan of salvation, " etc. This plan or scheme of 
salvation is commonly considered to comprise a thesis of rive 
points or dogmas: (1) a 4i fall of man."— a corruption of his 
nature whereby every person has incurred the penal- 
eternal anguish; (2) a vicarious atonement bv Christ, who 
through his sufferings and death satisfied the cfivine law, and 
opened a way of escape from the penalty and anguish to all who 
by faith accept the beneht of his sacrirk ity of 

Christ, which alone could have made his atonement 
in lieu of the whole human race: (4) the publication of this 
danger, and of the plan of redemption, in an inspired re 
tion authenticated by miracles ; and 1 5) the eternal blessedness 
•of all who accept and believe in this -piano! and 

the everlasting torment of those who reject and disbelieve it. 

The " covenant of redemption " and "justification by faith " 
have sometimes been stated to import that. •* before the crea- 
tion of the human race, God stipulated with Christ that the 
sins of the redeemed should be imputed to the inn- :irist, 

who should be condemned and put to death, that wh 
should heartily consent to the cov :iciliation 

offered through Christ should, by the imputation of his obedi- 
ence unto them, be justified and holden righteous before God." 

Five bleeding wounds. ... " ] 

* l Nor let the ransomed sinner du 
The Father hears him pray — his dear anointed one : 
He cannot turn away the 

The Spirit answers to the blood, 

And tells me I am born of God. 



REDEMPTION 20£ 

Jesus- paid it all, all the debt I owe, 

And nothing either great or small remains for me to do. 

Hallelujah, tis done ! I believe on the Son ! 

I am saved by the blood of the crucified One. 

Elvina M. Hall. 

With mine own heart I am in constant strife. 

What shall I do ? 
Remembrance of past errors blights my life. 

What shall I do ? 
Though kindly Thou, O Lord, my sins forgivest, 
Their mem'ry still within my heart is rife. 

What shall I do? 

Omar Khayyam.. 

The human sense of weakness — of dependence on some 
higher power for rescue from woes — will be recalled, not 
wholly without analogy, in the passage in The Light of Asia 
where Gautama is represented as becoming the Buddha: — 

The veil is rent 
Which blinded me. I am as all these men 
Who cry upon their gods and are not heard 
Or are not heeded, — yet there must be aid I 
Perchance the gods have need of help themselves, 
Being so feeble that, when sad lips cry, 
They cannot save. / would not let one cry 
Whom I could save ! How can it be that Brahm 
Would make a world and keep it miserable, 
Since if, all powerful, he leaves it so, 
He is not good ; and, if not powerful, 
He is not God ? 

Edwin A rnold^ 

Poetic portraiture — as in case of Milton and some others — r 
has even represented the " Covenant " as having been executed 
between two persons and attested by a third person in a sort of 
Trinity-council. 

Calvin's view* is: (i) God was an enemy to man until 
Christ died ; (2) Christ satisfied the justice of God, and paid 
our debt ; (3) he was a substitute who suffered God's wrath 
and all the punishment due to sinners ; and (4) he thus recon- 
ciled God to man, and made it possible for God to forgive our 
sins, which he could not have done otherwise, even though man 
repented. 

In support of Calvin's view, Paul's words are appealed to, — 
"enemies," "reconciled," "ransom" "redemption," etc. To 
which the "free-will" advocates reply that Paul declared God 
to be not an enemy, but the opposite : God, " by his great love 
wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sin, hath 
quickened us together with Christ, and saved us by free 
grace";f that the words "ransom," "sacrifice," etc., were 

* Institutes, Book ii., chap, xvi., §§ 2 and 10. t Eph. ii., 5. 



206 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Paul's most natural nomenclature in his answer to the amazed 
questionings of Jews, Greeks, and Romans,— " How can there 
be a religion without ritual, temple, or victim ? " — namely. 
" Christ is our sacrifice, our passover, our lamb slain from the 
foundation of the world." 

The Assembly's " Confession " * says: " Our first parents 
sinned," etc. "They being the root of all mankind, the guilt 
of this sin was impu:ed and the same death in sin conveyed to 
all their posterity." In support of this atements 

of Paul have been cited: (i) Rom. v.. i 2. i 

(3) Eph. ii., 3. These have been otk plained to mean: 

(1) " The influence of one man's sin hath extended itself 
all men. Why should not the inrlu- one man's g 

extend itself overall men?" (.-> l ' Since moral death entered 
the world by the disobedience of a sin and has spread 

itself over the race, why should not m< enter the world 

by another single man. and also spread over the whole ra 
(3) "Death passed upon all men because" — Adam? no — 
themselves "all have sinned." A law is not broken: a man 
transgresses the law, and the law breaks him. " Bv nature 
children of wrath " means by race or by natural position 
By their position in the midst of a carnal race, the life of that 
race flowed into them, so that they were also from 

God, and under a sense of divine wrath. t 

(2) The evolutional view of the redemption of the sou! 
be considered in the next two chapters. 

*Chap. vi. 

t As to the necessity of an incarnation for the 1 of the creative purpose, 

see Dorner's History of Hie Doctrine of :'■: 
Ullmann's Reformatoren von der Refortnation, ii., pp. 339-401. 



Chapter XXXIX. 

TRANSITION. 

What Transitional Condition is i7nplied in the "Free-will" 
Explanation of PauPs Words, " All be made alive" etc.? 

That Paul set forth two transitions : first, from the " carnal n 
man, under dominion of the animal propensities, to the psychi- 
cal (or "natural") man, under dominion of the law; secondly, 
from this merely moral man to the spiritual man, from the law 
to the gospel, from effort to impulse, from duty to love. A 
sense of bondage, of want, is the subjective condition of 
redemption; the gospel of Christ the objective condition. So 
long as a soul is struggling up through transition and refusing 
evil, it is not guilty for what it does ; "not I, but sin.*' 

This new life, this trust, this hope, was the leaven mingled in 
the meal till all should be leavened. Thus, while the Calvinis- 
tic view considers men in only two classes, it has been found 
more convenient for free-will expression to demark three. 
Dr. J. F. Clarke, in his eighth discourse on the " Ideas of 
Paul," — text, I. Cor. xv., 22, "As in Adam all die, so also in 
Christ shall all be made alive," — concludes: — 

Christ introduces a tendency to good by making God, duty, and 
immortality realities to the soul. Philosophy gives them to us as 
probabilities for the thought; Christianity introduces them into our 
life. Philosophy and theology theorize; religion realizes. One rests 
on speculation, the other on experience. By inward intuition, inward 
experience, — call it what you will, — Christ came in contact with 
truth, saw it, felt it, knew it. Christianity and science rest on the 
same basis, — experience. Christianity is a perpetually new demon- 
stration of the reality of God, duty, and immortality, in each genera- 
tion, in each soul. Accordingly, to the religious man, God is as real 
as the world; laws of duty as absolute as the laws of nature; immor- 
tality, or eternal life, or spiritual existence, flowing from God, now 
and always, as real as bodily life, or temporal existence, flowing from 
the outward through the senses. 

To sum up what we have said : The carnal man dislikes and shuns 
God ; the moral man fears and obeys him ; the spiritual man loves 



208 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

and lives for him. The carnal man is his enemy; the moral man 
his servant ; the spiritual man his friend. The carnal man is led by 
animal desires ; the moral man by conscience ; the spiritual man by 
love. The carnal man is moving downward toward death ; the 
spiritual man upward, toward life and peace ; the moral man, even 
when standing still, is looking in the right direction. In the carnal 
man there is no conflict : he is at harmony with himself, for his higher 
nature sleeps, and his soul obeys his lower nature. In the spiritual 
man, again, there is no conflict, but a higher and truer harmony of all 
his powers; for body serves the soul, and soul the .spirit. But in the 
moral man there is a constant struggle and conflict ; for the flesh and 
spirit are both active, and the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the 
spirit against the flesh, and these are opposite one to another, so that 
ye cannot do the things ye would. 

Thus we see the truth of Paul's saying, M We are saved by hope," 
and how it is connected with his whole system of thought. I: 
hope full of immortal life. Hope g ; ves courage, and helps us for- 
ward. The great gift of hope came to the world through Christ. He 
taught mankind to see an infinite Love surrounding all being, guiding 
all events, inspiring all hearts, and leading all things on toward an 
infinite and perfect good. With this hope in our goals, we can face 
evil and conquer it. Evil is real, it is in as, : but it is 

not supreme. Good is higher and strong :, but 

grace more.— Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, March \ 

The old in religion dies out,— the old error, the old ation, 

the old superstition ; but not the old religion. For this there 
decline, no decay; for it is the life of (. he soul.— c^ 

Dewey. 

These words — " we are saved by hope " — recall those of 
Dr. Hedge, in his chapter on " Dualism and Optin. — 

Optimism is the true solution of the problem of evil, a doctrine 
which that of Theism must stand or fall. Ii : the 

best possible world, then the God of Theisn >rld's 

creator; the best possible, not as a present finalitv, but as means and 
method of the perfect good. This is the i m which 

reason can legitimate. The time will never come when evil shall 
wholly cease from the earth, when all wrong shall be expunged. 
fering unknown, and 

Fear and sin ar ire, 

Cast out by per: 

Neither in this world nor in any future world is such a 
possible. Evil there must alwavs be. Old evils mav be abolished, 
but new evils will spring. The health of humanitv requires the exist- 
ence of evil as incentive to effort and topic of action. Pi 
better than all perfection. Finding is good, but seekin. 
finding is to end with rest in the found. The kin : heaven 

must be always coming ; but hope would expire were it folly come. 



TRANSITION 209 

And the saying remains forever true, that " by hope we are saved." — 
Frederic H. Hedge ( Ways of the Spirit ', p. 251). 

In this connection, it will be edifying to note the famous 
utterance of the late Thomas Carlyle, who had been educated a 
Calvinist ; and this, though one cannot help being reminded of 
the remark Mr. Emerson made in 1848, " Carlyle is a trip- 
hammer with an ^Eolian attachment " : — 

Our Life is compassed round with Necessity ; yet is the meaning of 
Life itself no other than Freedom, than voluntary Force. Thus have 
we a warfare ; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. For 
the God-given mandate, Work thou in Well-doing, lies mysteriously 
written in Promethean Prophetic characters in our hearts, and leaves 
us no rest till it be deciphered and obeyed ; till it burn forth in our 
conduct, ? visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given 
mandate, Eat thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively pro- 
claims itself through every nerve, — must there not be a confusion, a 
contest, before the better influence can become the upper?. . . Our 
Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our Forty 
Days are long years of suffering and fasting. Nevertheless, to these 
also comes an end. . . . 

The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out ; its howl went silent 
within me, and the long-deafened soul could now hear. I paused in 
my wild wanderings, and sat me down to wait and consider ; for it 
was as if the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to 
renounce utterly, and say, " Fly, then, false shadows of Hope. I 
will chase you no more, I will believe you no more. And ye, too, 
haggard spectres of Fear, I care not for you ; ye, too, are all shadows 
and a lie. Let me rest here, for I am way-weary and life-weary." . . . 
The first preliminary moral act, Annihilation of Self, had been 
happily accomplished ; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and 
its hands ungyved. . . . Often, also, could I see the black Tempest 
marching in anger through the distance. Round some Schreckhorn, as 
yet grim-blue, would the vapor gather, and there tumultuously eddy, 
and flow down like a mad witch's hair ; till after a space it vanished, 
and in the clear sunbeam your Schreckhorn stood smiling, grim-white, 
for the vapor had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest 
in thy great fermenting- vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a 
World, O Nature ! Or what is Nature ? Ha ! Why do I not name 
thee God ? Art not thou the " living garment of God "? O heavens, 
is it, in very deed, He, then, that ever speaks through thee, that lives 
and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me ? 

Fore-shadows — call them rather fore-splendors — of that Truth and 
beginning of Truths fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than 
Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zembla ; ah ! like the mother's 
voice to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown 
tumults ; like soft streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated 
heart, — came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, 
a charnel-house with spectres, but god-like, and my Father's ! 



2IO RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow-man : with 
an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man ! 
Art thou not tried and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, 
whether thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou 
not so weary, so heavy-laden ? and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O 
my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my and wipe away all 

tears from thy eyes! Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, wh: 
this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could' hear, was no longer a 
maddening discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate cries and 
sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear oi n are pra 

The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now mv needy Mother 
my cruel Step-dame. Man, with h tad Waul mean 

Endeavors, had become the dearer to me ; and, even for rings 

and his sins, I now first named him Brother. Thus 
the porch of that "Sanctuary of Sorrow ^e, steep 

I, too, been guided thither; and ere lor. 
and the " Divine Depth of Sorrow " lie- 
There is in man a Higher than i do 
without Happiness, and instead thereof fin 
God-inspired Doctrine art thou also 
and broken with manifold merciful 

contrite, and learn it! Oh, thank thy 1 hankfully 

bear what yet remain: thou had-; thee 

needed to be annihilated. By 1> 
rooting out the deep-seated chro 

Death. On the roaring billow- : % but 

borne aloft into the azure of Eternit 
This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all c ultra 
wherein whoso walks and works, it evith him 

were it never so excellent, is worthless till 
duct Nay, properly, Conviction is 

true is it, as a wise man teaches us. that M i mn ot 

be removed except by Action." ( )n which 

gropes painfully in the darkness or un< vehe- 

mently that the dawn may ripen into day, lav this 
heart, which to me was of invaluable 
lies nearest thee," which thou knowest to I 

Duty will already have become cleare: that has 

not its Duty, its Ideal, was never vet here, 

in this poor, miserable, hampered, rem thou 

even now standest, here or nowhere is thv at there- 

trom; and, working, believe, live, be in 

Of many Olvinist replications to the foregoing, a prominent 

one is that of Rev. George MeCrie, wh, 
true that ' God loves in me,' it must be equallv'true that * God 
hates in me ' ; and, by the same logic, he is all hatred to sin, and 
indignation against sinners." * 



* Tht Religion of our , London, 1875, P- 57- 



TRANSITION 211 

Carlyle's admonition, " Love not pleasure," brings to mind 
that of Charles W. Wendte, * 4 Pleasure ma)' fill up the interstices 
of life, but it is poor material to build its framework of.'' 

In the choice of amusements, a business man should patronize out- 
of-dodr exercises ; any diversion which keeps one up nearly until 
midnight in a crowded hall and unhealthy atmosphere, is not in the 
better sense recreative or improving. . . . He should not be com- 
pletely absorbed in business ; he should ride on the harrow, not under 
it. — C. B. Phtteii {Lecture before the Boston Young Men's Christian 
Union) . 

Dean Stanley tells us * that Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, 
once meeting a shepherd in a lonely path in the Highlands, 
greeted him with the question, " Do you know the Father ? " 
and, without waiting for the reply, passed on his way. Years 
afterwards, he met the same shepherd among the same hills, 
who recognized him, and gave him the answer as he passed, " I 
know the Father now." That knowledge he had found in the 
experience of a human life. 

It comes to us, if it comes at all, through those years of learning 
and of waiting in which our human hearts are both humbled and 
exalted, both made empty and enriched. That knowledge is the 
knowledge in which all moral experiences sum up their wisdom of 
life ; and it cannot be taught, for it is a revelation coming through the 
life of man, through all his affections, needs, trials, satisfactions, — a 
knowledge of the heart which cannot be taken away. Thus the 
Bible sums up its revelations of the Father in one intensely human 
word, God is love. — Dr. Newmaii Smyth {Old Faiths in New Light, 
p. 277). 

Habitual evils change not on a sudden, 

But many days must pass and many sorrows. 

Conscious remorse and anguish must be felt, 

To curb desire, to break the stubborn will, 

And work a second nature in the soul, 

Ere virtue can resume the place she lost. 

Nicholas Roive. 

* Lectures on Hist. Church of Scotland, p. 184. 



Chapter XL. 



REGE N ERA Tiny, 



What is the Evolutional and What 

concerning Emotion, Subordn. Profession, as . 

tors or as Results t 

That which particularly emphasizes as essential thereto 
introspection, self-renunciation, aspiration, and " at-one-ment 
with God." This view, no less than the inte: al. considers 

that Christ "gave himself for us, that h< I redeem us 

all iniquity,' — but not in the same a The thesis hov 

wherein has been presented in four p i He rendered 

an unbroken obedience to the law of the spirit; he served the 
spirit of God ; he came not to do his 1, but the will of 

God. (2) The law of the spirit making men 01 
only by the law in our members that we are many), C! 
an unfailing sense of the mutua :n % — 

that it was not God's will that one of his human creatures 
should perish. (3) Christ per^ in this uninterrupted 

obedience to the law of the spirit,— in this u:.: 
human solidarity,— even to the death, altho thing 

befell him which might break the one or He 

had in himself, and in all he said and did. that infallible t 
of attraction which doubled the virtue of evervthing said and 
done by him, 

And made it the beacon toward sweetness ar.<! — 

The beacon to beauty, 

The beacon to duty, 
The beacon that brightens all tempest and nL 

t stt Shut* Burnkam. 



The inworking and outworking of our consequer 
and sense of obligation toward him a- d\ con 

Dr Horace Bushnell's view of the d was that 

he died to reconcile man to God, not God to man: that there 

* Chap. xxv. See Dr. M. Arnold's St. Paul and ProU*Umtum % /asrim. 



REGENERATION 213 

is no antagonism between justice and mercy which makes an 
" atonement " (in the dogmatic sense of the word) necessary or 
even possible. The opinion long and generally held that the 
Scripture sacrifices import expiation, he thought might be 
accounted for by the fact that there is a natural tendency in all 
worthy ideas of religion to lapse into such as are unworthy, — 
repentance, for instance, into doing penance ; that the sacri- 
fices could easily be corrupted in this mariner, and, in fact, were 
by all the pagan religions ; and then that there was imported 
back into the constructions of Scripture a notice of expiation 
as pertaining to sacrifice under the plausible but unsuspected 
sanction of classic usages and associations.* 

Dr. William E. Channing's view was that the blood of Christ 
is emblematic : " Our liberty was purchased and our country 
saved by the blood of patriots." f "I regard Jesus as the 
Shekinah to us." % Similarly, Dr. Emanuel Swedenborg.§ 

In becoming acquainted with Jesus as one of ourselves, we are un- 
consciously learning to have faith in the highest ideal, and a new 
sense is formed within us of the worth and sacred destiny of the race 
which has produced such an instance of what it may become. It is 
not from any theological propositions, however logically sound, it is 
not from any verbal precepts, however wise and pure, that we can 
draw the strength that we greatly need amidst the impenetrable 
mystery of life. There is no religion that is of any value, however 
venerable its doctrines and its ceremonials, that is not rooted deep in 
faith in human virtue ; that does not create an ever-growing trust in 
rectitude, in unselfishness, in whatever is good and noble. There can 
be no faith in God unless there is faith in man. If we do not hold 
our brother sacred whom we see, how can we revere God whom we 
do not see? There is no divine goodness for us if we do not believe 
in human virtue. — Dr. W. H. Furness (Jesus). 

We have changed the Master's summary, " Repent, for the king- 
dom of heaven is at hand," into another, " Repent, for the kingdom 
of hell is not far off." Instead of making men afraid to sin, we have 
tried to make them afraid to die. Even in that we have not greatly 
succeeded. . . . Make a man understand that there is no happiness for 
him except in being merciful, meek, Christ-like, and you make him 
realize that he must be born again. — William B. Wi-ight. 

Death-bed repentance is burning the candle of life in the service of 
the devil, then blowing the snuff in the face of heaven. — Lorenzo Dow. 

The permanence of the blessing of regeneration is entitled 

* TJie Vicarious Sacrifice grounded in Principles of Universal Obligation, 
passim. 

t The Perfect Life, p. 279. % Memoirs, etc., p. 438. 

§ The True Christian Religion, n. 706. 



2I4 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

to further consideration. In a discourse on Eccl. iii., 14. 
"What God gives, he gives forever," Dr. J. F. Clarke says : — 
When God has once given us to know himself, this greatest of all 
gifts he gives forever. After years of trivial, outward life, life 
empty of any solid satisfaction, there comes some day of trial, of 
sorrow, of great and bitter disappointment; some day in which 
remorse seizes us for our wasted r our hardness and mdlfl 

ence toward our friends, or our life empty of any great purpoi 
Then, perhaps, in the midst of our sense of utter help' are 

led to see that God loves us still ; that his arms are around us ; that 
he can forgive to the uttermost all OUI foil J, and in that sight 
begin a new life. After this, no matter what 
thing we can never lose again; a faith ii love which 

can quench; one anchor which 
abides fa^th," says Paul, telling how belief ch 
away. If we have ever once reallv trusted the I 
that will always remain in the depths 
love. When God gave me that, 

what is really meant by the Calvin e of 

the saints." Not that the saints " 

may not forget their best pur 
times. But there remains th 
to bring them once again to their Father. 
Prodigal Son back to his father was the rem 
liberality. "How many hired 
enough!" — Boston Satin March 1 

In either view, it is evident that Paul considered ( 
have entered into his glory when he had made hi 
death itself a crowning witness to 1 
ness. The author of the Epistle to the IK 
the death as analogous to the Jewish system 
his powers of combining, type-finding, and expounding s« 
somewhat to have dominated his rel ig receptio 

the true expiation was has been well 
has to step between us foolish tra the des* 

natural consequences of our tra -ion, and, by a super- 

human example, a spending himself without stir. re than 

mortal scale of justice and purit le ideal of hu: 

life and conduct from the deterioration • ich nu 

ordinary practice threatens it. In this way, Christ truly " 
came for our sakes poor, though he be wai 

"bruised for our iniquities. " he " suit, red in our beb 
the sin of many/' and " made intercession for the tr 

* Perhaps Apollos, " mighty in the Scriptures," Acts \ 
t II. Cor. v., 2i ; Titus a., 14. 



REGENERATION 21 5 

gressors." In this way, he was sacrificed as a blameless lamb 
to redeem us from the vain manner of life that had become our 
second nature. In this way, he who knew no sin was made to 
be sin for us. 

With Goethe's Elder, in the Hall of the Past, would we " draw 
a veil over those sufferings, because we reverence them so 
highly : . . . those mysterious secrets in which the divine depth 
of sorrow lies hid," we would not " fondle them and trick them 
out until the most reverend of all solemnities appears vulgar 
and paltry." * 

As to this characteristic of self-subordination, similarly testi- 
fies that earnest evangelist, Dwight L. Moody: " It is a good 
deal better to live a holy life than to talk about it. . . . Light- 
houses don't ring bells and fire cannons to call attention to 
their shining : they just shine." And this coincides with the 
reverence — not to say self-respect — of those who have at all 
reflected on the growth of character. No sincere man very 
often mentions that he loves his wife and children. " Special 
ecstatic experiences in the direction of soul-delirium, vented in 
rhapsodies and loud agonizings, do not appear to be the lot 
of most men of deep religious conviction." This anonymous 
comment f recalls other current aphorisms as to intellection, 
emotion, annunciation, and repression : — 

The heart of man is older than his head. The first-born is sensi- 
tive, but blind : his younger brother has a cold, but all-comprehensive 
glance. The blind must consent to be led by the clear-sighted, if he 
would avoid falling. — W. C. L. Ziegler. 

Some people carry their hearts in their heads : very many carry 
their heads in their hearts. The great difficulty is to keep them apart, 
and yet both actively working together. — John P. Durbin, Jr. 

Mere sensibility is not saving. Many are affected by the tragedy 
of the cross, who will not deny themselves a single indulgence for his 
sake who hung on it. — George Punchard. 

Discretion and hardy valor are the twins of honor, and nursed 
together make a conqueror ; divided, but a mere talker. — Beaumont 
and Fletcher. 

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He 
does not make a speech ; he takes a low business tone, avoids all 
brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, 
speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment 
by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest 
weapon. — Ralph W. Emerson. 

* Wilhelm Meister's Travels, chap. xi. 

t Of the Springfield Republican on the Northfield prayer-meeting. 



2l6 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Striking manners are bad manners. — Robert Hall. 

He who gives himself airs of importance exhibits the credentials 
of impotence. — John Gaspar Lavater. 

Honest and courageous people have very little to say about either 
their courage or their honesty. The sun has no need to boast of his 
brightness, nor the moon of her effulgence. — Hosea Ballou. 

Who think too little and who talk too much. — John I 

I do suspect you grievously, ... you pr ie so infinite 

William Shakspere. 

Words are women, deeds are men. — George Herbert. 

To indulge a consciousness of g< is the H .>se it. — 

Shu- King [Ancient sacred book of the C 

As the traveller entered that ancient city | e], he read 01 

first gate, " Be bold " ; and on the second gate, ' :, be bol 

evermore be bold"; and then he | un the third 

gate, "Be not too bold:" Am ould be lik 

momentum of a falling planet, and 1 like the return 

due and perfect curve.— Ralph IV. Em 

Much of the charm of life is ruined by the exacting demands of 
confidence. Respect the natural n. deli- 

cate flowers of feeling close their petals,' when the-. iched too 

rudely.— Stopford A. Brooke. 

I am sick of opinions. . . . Give me l humble, gentle God 

and man ; a man full of mercy and good fru 

without hypocrisy," a man laying i. a in the work of faith, the 

patience of hope, and the labor of love.— ley. 

One feels the best things without speaking of them.— Berthold 
Auerbach. 

Silence is the sanctuary of pruder 

They that govern most make leas Se/den. 

Macaulay ... has occasional . that make his 

conversation perfectly delightful- 
Silence is the virtue of the feeble.— . I 

And do a wilful stillness entertain re; 

nothing.— William Shakspere. 

What we savin secret is known to Him who made our in: 
nature. He who made us is present with us, thoug. 
The Papyrus Prisse (2000 B.C.). 



REGENERATION 21 7 



Thought is deeper than all speech, 
Feeling deeper than all thought : 

Souls to souls can never teach 
What unto themselves is taught. 



Approve 
The depth and not the tumult of the soul. . . 
Soft is the music that would charm forever. 
The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly. 



Christopher P. Crunch. 

William Wordsworth. 
Dr. Edward Young. 



The man that blushes is not quite a brute. 

Man lives apart, but not alone ; 

He walks amid his peers, unread ; 
The best of thoughts that he hath known, 
For Jack of listeners, are never said. 

Jean Inge low. 
Of every noble work, the silent part is best, 
Of all expression that which cannot be expressed. 

William W. Story. 
Words that weep and tears that speak. 

Abraham Cowley. 

Passions are likened best to floods and streams : 
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb. 

Sir Walter Raleigh. 

Remember aye the ocean deeps are mute ; 

The shallows roar : 
Worth is the ocean, fame is but the bruit 

Along the shore. 

John F. C. Schiller {translated by A. H. Clough). 

Our whitest pearl we never find ; 

Our ripest fruit we never reach ; 
Thy flowering moments of the mind 
Drop half their petals in our speech. 

Dr. Oliver W. Holmes. 
My name is Pride. . . . 
Love softly whispered, " I will be the guide." 
" Not so," I laughed in gay disdain, 
" For Love is blind.". . . 
And on we wandered through the summer weather, 

Crushing the fragrant flowers beneath our careless feet, 
Unheeding all the glory, only feeling " Life is sweet," 
Love and I together. 
Hope sang for us, and we were glad and gay ; 
But I was guide, and so we lost our way. 

A . A bbott. 



Chapter XLI. 



SALVATI" N*. 



What is the Evolutional View € w com- 

pared with the Earlier 1 
of the Life and Death 
Salvation ? 

That while Paul from first mption, 

transition, and regeneration j * there 

gressive modification of the doctrine of "the ap; of the 

glory," etc.t 

By nature and habit, and with 1 f that the end of the 

world was nigh at hand, Paul us< ean a M 

coming and kingdom. Later Christianity ha 

it has transformed so much I 

but it has by no means spiritualized t ial 

growth advanced, spiritualized them re: he came 

think in using them, more and m lual inward trai 

tion of the world by a conformity I 'he will i 

than a Messianic advent. \ 

with him, and not first: th 

make us more righteous, to 1 ine 

law, to enable us to "bear fruit t 

(St. Paul and Protestantism). 

Elsewhere, Dr. Arnold, advert 
renunciation, admits with Paul that the world 
not God (or the true order of things) b 

phias\ — that is, by or through the mce of 

its intellectual impulses, — but insists that it is yet ne 
to set up a sort of converse to this propo and to - 

* See last three chapters. 

t For the grace of God hath appeared. I 
us, to the intent that, denying ungodlines 
and righteously and godly in this prese 

hope and appearing of the glory of oui who 

gave himself for ns, that he might redeem u^ him- 

self a people for his own posses> 



SALVATION 219.- 

Iikewise (what is equally true, taking for want of a better term 
a certain word in a technical sense, and without disparaging its 
nobler associations): " The world by Puritanism knew not God. 
A clew to sound order and authority we can only get by going 
back upon the actual instincts and forces which rule our life, 
seeing them as they really are, connecting them with other 
instincts and forces, and enlarging our whole view and rule of 
life."* 

An impulse to do a thing is in itself no reason why we should do it, 
because impulses proceed from two sources, quite different and of 
different degrees of authority. St. Paul contrasts them as the inward 
man and the man in our members, the mind of the flesh and the 
spiritual mind. Jesus contrasts them as life, properly so named, and 
life in this world,— the former full of light, endurance, felicity, in con- 
nection with the higher and permanent self. And the means by which 
a man might be placed in the former was by dying to the latter. 
"Whosoever would come after me, let him renounce himself," — let 
him die as regards his old self, and so live. This was what Paul 
meant by bearing about the dying [necrosis] of the Lord Jesus that the 
life of Jesus may be made manifest in our body. By the "himself " 
to be renounced — the "old man" to be put off, the life in this world 
■ — was meant "doing the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts" 
[thels?nata ton dianoion, Eph. ii., 3] which Jesus had already put his disci- 
ples in the way of sifting and scrutinizing, and of trying by the standard 
of conformity to conscience. — St. Paul and Protestantism, passim. 

Similar testimony upon the necessity of the dying of the 
lower self in order that the higher may live, comes from wit- 
nesses of every assortment of antecedents. Goethe sings out, — 

[Stirb und werde ! 
Derm so lang du das nicht, 
Bist du nur ein trii Gast # 

Auf der dunkeln Erde] 

" Die and re-exist ! for so long as this is not accomplished, 
thou art but a troubled guest upon an earth of gloom." 

Selfishness, . . . the most inhibited sin in the canon. — Shakspere. 

A covetous man does not possess his wealth : his wealth possesses 
him. — Bias [One of the " Seven "). 

Dr. J. F. Clarke, in his ninth discourse on the " Ideas of 
Paul" (text, II. Cor. v., 19: " God was in Christ reconciling the 
world unto himself "), concludes : — 

All theories of the atonement fall into two classes, mythological 
and moral. The mythological theory teaches that it was some trans- 

* Culture and A narchy, p. 66. 



220 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

action in the supernatural world, some work done to satisfy the 
divine justice, or to make peace between the unreconciled attributes 
of God,— to make it possible for God to forgive his penitent child. 

The other theories are moral. They teach that Christ died to 
manifest the eternal love of God,— not to create it, but to make it 
known; and that his death is the supreme example of a power which 
comes down from heaven into human hearts, to purify, redeem, and 
:save the world. It teaches that we all can live and act in this same 
spirit, all be mediators of this divine life, all can unite with Jesus in 
reconciling men to God and to each other. 

Paul said that he rejoiced in his sufferings, which enabled him "to 
fill up that which was behind in the sufferings of Ci ol. i., 

24). This text has much perplexed the t: ic theories 

declare that Christ's sufferings were a full and perfect satisfaction for 
the sins of all mankind. Paul seems to declare that h suffer- 

ings supplied that which was deficient in those of Christ. The truth 
is that human self-sacrifice carries on the work of Christ. All suffer- 
ings generously endured for the sake of our brothers partake of the 
nature of Christ's sufferings, and do the same atoning work. They 
make it easier to believe in a Divine Love, because we have seen the 
same love in man. If men forgive us, we believe God can f 
Man's love, therefore, like that of Chri- iles the world to God; 

and all the blood of martyrs has the same redeeming power with that 
of Jesus. — Boston Saturday Evening Gaztttc y April 2, 188 1. 

On this theme of salvation, — of growth into atone-ment with 
our moral environment, through the method of Jesus (intro- 
spection and self-renunciation. — Mr. Whither has sung in a 
strain whose key-note of sweet reasonableness must have been 
derived from the Master himself. The extrinsic topic was the 
^sometimes) silent meeting of the Friends or 44 < £oakei 

So to the cairn 

The innermost 01 truth 

The mysterv dimlv under-. 

That love of God 19 love of good. 

And. chiefly, its div 

In Him of ice; 

That to be saved ; . — 

Salvation from our s 

From more than elemental fire 

The soul's unsanctitied d 

From ^in itself, and not I 

That warns us of its chafing chain ; 

That worship's deeper meaning lies 

In mercy and not sacrifice, 

Not proud humilities of sense 

And posturing of penitence. 

But love's unforced obedience ; 

That Book and Church and 1 ven 

For man, not God.— for earth, "not heav- 

The blessed means to hoi 

Not masters, but benignant fr^ 



SALVATION 221 

That the dear Christ dwells not afar 
The king of some remoter star, 
Listening at times with flattered ear 
To homage wrung from selfish fear, 
But here amidst the poor and blind, 
The bound and suffering of our kind, 
In works we do, in prayers we pray, 
Life of our life, he lives to-day. 

Among the Hills, and Other Poems : " The Meeting."* 

But how as to those poor souls that have little or no power 
to think? To whom little has been given, little will be re- 
quired. Not the worst misfortune in the world was that of the 
u Daft Catechumen " : — 

He wore the cowl, he kissed the cross, 

He handled book and beads : 
The friars plied his stupid head 

With litanies and creeds. 
'Twas vain. Though lines on lines they taught, 

He could learn only three : • 

I love the Lord, I trust the Lord, 

I hope the Lord to see. A non~ 

And how as to those who have a few additional glimmerings ? 

With wider view come loftier goal ! 

With broader light, more good to see ! 
With freedom, more of self-control ! 

With knowledge deeper reverence be ! 
Anew we pledge ourselves to Thee, 

To follow where thy truth shall lead ; 
Afloat upon its boundless sea, 

Who sails with God is safe indeed. 

Samuel LongfellvaK 



Chapter XLII. 



D A M N A T I 



What Three Views concerning Christ's Intendm 
of the Words " Gehenna^ M Condi 

(i) The literalist, (2) the moderate orthodox, and (3) the evo- 
lutional. 

The first is expressed in Rev. John Brown echism " 

(still extensively used) as follows : — 

He'll is a place of endless torment, being a lake that burns with fire 
and brimstone. . . Wicked men's companions in hell are their 
father, the devil, and all other evil angel*. • • • They will continu- 
hell forever and ever. . . . They will roar, curse, and blaspheme God. 
— Two Shorter Catechisms United, p. 14. 

And a prominent orthodox professor \\ tribution : — 

In few things is the superlative wisdom ind espe- 

cially that of our Lord, more obvious than in the unmitigated, the 
peremptory, the absolute revelation of eternal ■ The 

popular mind must hold it with firm, close r it cannot long 

hold it at all. It never can In I the law of chances — 

Dr. Austin Phelps ( The C N'ovemK 

Whereupon, a keen editorial observer comments : — 

A largely increasing number of Christians I 
Churches think "the superlative w ore 

obvious in what is withheld concerning that doctrine than in 
revealed. Positive revelation being denied, the sentiments of hope, 
faith, and our confidence in the justice of God assert them ind 

the old doctrine of everlasting punishment goes to the limbo of obso- 
lete dogmas. — Samuel J. Bm hnstian Register, Nov. 3: 

The second view considers the word M Gehe: e name 

•of the offal-depository fire-place near Jerusalem* to be used 
simply figuratively, as being the only adequate emblem 01 
in a condition of endless loathing, re: ■ The 

* As to the various words translated " hell." oon Farr.i ► and 

.Judgment, chap. xiv. 



DAMNATION 223 

parable of the shepherd's goats, the expressions traceable to 
Babylonian mythology, etc., are considered to refer to an 
irremediable ultimate local segregation of the finally impenitent.* 
The third view considers all those utterances attributed to 
Jesus that would indicate any belief in the superstitions of his 
time and country to be either the distortions of successive narrow- 
minded but adoring reporters, or else mere early and temporary 
beliefs which finally became very essentially modified. It 
declares that sin's punishment is sin's effect. Dr. Matthew 
Arnold says : — 

Jesus employed as sanctions of his doctrine his contemporaries' 
ready-made notions of hell and judgment, just as Socrates did. He 
talked of the outer darkness and the unquenchable fire, as Socrates 
talked of the rivers of Tartarus. ... It is not to be supposed that a 
rejection of all the poetry of popular religion is necessary or ad- 
visable now, any more than when Jesus came. But it is an aim 
which may well indeed be pursued with enthusiasm, to make the true 
meaning of Jesus, in using that poetry, emerge and prevail. For the 
immense pathos, so perpetually enlarged upon, of his life and death, 
does really culminate here, — that Christians have so profoundly 
misunderstood him. 

And, in this connection, it has been mentioned, as not without 
significance, that Luke (iv., 19, 20) says that Jesus, upon quot- 
ing Isaiah lxi., 2, "to preach the acceptable year of the Lord," 
" closed the book and sat down " ; probably without adding the 
rest, "and the day of vengeance of our God." 

The "cosmical principle symbolized by the serpent" has 
already been considered in one phase, in the chapter on Demoni- 
zation.f As to a personal devil, Moncure D. Conway says : — 

The doctrine of a personal spirit of evil, originating in Persia, had 
invested some centuries before the birth of Christ an Assyrian angel 
of Accusation, — Satan ; and he had become degraded from a retri- 
butive agent of God into a fiend. There was no philosophy of evil 
at the time to secure even the mind of Christ against this idea. And, 
indeed, . however repulsive it may be now, at that period it seemed 
essential to the growth of a pure Ideal of God, as Infinite Love, with 
whom the origination of evil could not be associated. The world was 
recoiling from the worship of demons under guise of deities, and the 
new ideal was secured by attributing all phenomena of evil to imps, 
furies, dragons, all of which were ultimately generalized by Chris- 
tianity into Satan, whose works it was the mission of Christ to 
destroy. — Idols and Ideals, App. Essay, p. 54. 

* As to purification by fire, etc., see Lydia M. Child's Progress of Religions 
Ideas, chap, ii., p. 160. (See chap. xlv. , post, .near the end.) See also TJie Rosi- 
cmcians, passim. t See chap, xviii. 



224 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

As to the future state, it is a trite hyperbole that the libraries 
of the world groan under the ponderous mass of matter directly 
devoted to this great theme. Some of the best thoughts bear- 
ing logically or collaterally thereon have been incidentally 
preserved in books treating mainly of other subjects. Thus, the 
eloquent passage in one of Horace Greeley's popular addresses, 
" Who shall say then that Nebuchadnezzar on his throne is 
happier than Daniel in his prison ? n etc., may be found in 
Recollections of a Busy Life, A ftp. Essay, p. 524. 

Not alone in Mr. Whittier's lines, 



Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 

The saddest are these, "It might have been,' 



or in Tennyson's, 



This is truth the poet sings, 
That a sorrow's crown ofsorrow 
Is remembering better thi: 



do we alight upon reminders of Dante 

fNessun maggior dolore 
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice 
Nella miseria.] 

No penitence and no confessional : 

No priest ordains i:. 

Amid deep ashes of their vanished y 

or of Cicero's burning utterance against l'iso : — 

Think not that guilt requires the burning torches of the Furies to 
agitate and torment it. Frauds, crimes, remembrances of the past, 
terrors of the future, — these are the Furies that are ever 

present to the mind of the impio 

Whoever sins against light kisses the lips of a blazing cannon. — 
Jeremy Taylor. 

Punishment is lame, but it comes. — George Herbert. 

Guilt is a spiritual Rubicon.— J. 

There is an aching that is worse than any pain. — George MacDonald. 

The good he scorned 
Stalked off reluctant, like an iil-used gh 
Not to return ; or, if it did, in 
Like those of angels, short and far between. 



He that has light within his own clear breast 
May sit in the centre and en 
But he that hides a dark soul and foul the- 
Benighted walks under the middav sun. 



M«rt Alnr. 



/. •** MBtan 



DAMNATION 22 £ 

Untainted by the guilty bribe, 
Uncursed amidst the harpy tribe ; 
No orphan's cry to wound my ear, 
My honor and my conscience clear ; 
Thus may I calmly meet my end, 
Thus to the grave in peace descend. 

Sir William Blackstone. 

Hell is the infinite terror of the soul, whatever that may he, . . . 
to be conscious of having done another an injury that through eter- 
nity never can be undone, — infinite, maddening remorse. — F W. 
Robertson. 

Eternal punishment is the consolidation and perpetuation of evil 
character, projecting itself into the eternal world, and reaping its own 
self-prepared consequences. — Dr. R. S. Storrs. 

" Lockhart, I may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, 
be a good man, be virtuous, be religious : nothing else will give you 
any comfort when you come to lie here." — Sir Walter Scott. 

Harmonization with our environment is the indispensable condition 
of peace of soul : our environment in this world and the next consists 
unalterably of God, conscience, and our own record. — Joseph Cook. 

An eminent essayist, referring to the effect of narcotics upon 
his dreams, indorses the common view that the "book of ac- 
count " is the mind itself of each individual : — 

Of this at least I feel assured, that there is no such thing as 
forgetting possible to the mind: a thousand accidents may and will 
interpose a veil : but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription 
remains forever; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the com- 
mon light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light 
which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be 
revealed when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn. — 
Thomas De Quincey {Confessions of an English Opium-eater, p. 149). 

Upon an asseveration in one of Joseph Cook's lectures that 
the maxim, " It is never too late to mend," is false, and that 
every conscience will regret sin's existence, Adoniram J. Pater- 
son animadverts, as importing from the premise that regret is 
pain, the sequence that — 

The St. Pauls and the St. Johns will suffer more than the Neros 
and the Caligulas. Christ, having infinite tenderness, will have infi- 
nite suffering. . . . There may be pertinence in the simile of Mr. 
Cook : " This planet moves through space enswathed in light. The 
radiance of the sun billows away to all quarters of infinity. Be- 
hind the globe, a shadow is projecting, diminishing, indeed, and 
lost at last in the immeasurable vastness of the illuminations of the 
scene." But the effect of sin — the shadow — never falls toward the 
sun, never upon the face of God. To say that it is to " darken the 



226 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

sea of glass, and cast its shadow across the great white throne," is 
irreverent. To say that the sin of a thousand years ago exists to-day 
is as unscientific as to affirm that the pains from which some martyr 
died will be active forever. wSin is not a distinct entity. Fed by evil 
desires, it lives; apart from these, it dies. . . . 

A reformer, expecting a judgment ''at hand/' is not necessarily 
declaring the eternal permanence of evil, when he cries, " He that is 
unjust, let him be unjust still": he r. i cannot now 

the city, give it to its fate." Sin is an awful thing in any age, in any 
world. Conformity of the soul to God is the onlv condition that can 
give peace, here or hereafter. God knew this from the beginning, 
and adjusted his universe accordingly. Evil is transient and incidental. 
As God lives and reigns, evil is doomed. is permanent and 

essential. As God lives and reigns, it shall gain the victory. Halle- 
lujah ! the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. 

Another writer propounded the inq : a min, 

who on earth repented at the at id died at : 

how does Mr. Cook happen to know that .at the a^e of thirty 
years more, in the other world, it is utterly in e for the 

same man to turn and go upward?" This recalls an unpub- 
lished sermon* of one of the r ipon this theme, 
the late Rev. Herman Bisbec Matt. \ 
your righteousness shall ei -hall in no 
enter into the kingdom of heav ered 
from a crude report of it, will be found excelk it:— . 

Every candid reader of the Xeu rved that the. 

discourse of Christ abounds in war iminent dan. 

the human soul, — something to be shunned at the 
standing, friends, and life itself. As to the characu nger, 

the indefiniteness of his expressio: 
differences of opinion. To foretell all th.. 
must be omniscient; and the same is true as to hell. 1 
to exhaust these themes, just as th 
when it looks at the stars. And this infinitude of t: 
soul has afforded ground for the pi a rated 

fantasies have superseded simple 'far- 
thing else in life, the revolting aspect exti 
reaction to the opposite. 

But the fact that heaven means the sum oi human blessedne- 
not affected by the limitations of our knowledge how far that ble- 
ness may go, what varieties it has, what laws of unfoldmen:. 
places for realization. So, also, what Christ calls d r hell 

has a clear and solemn meaning, although no man mav paint its 
lines or describe its sorrows. One who^looks out upon the s 
clear and magnificent idea of Ocean, althou r jgin- 

*Delivered in the Hawes Place Church, South Boston, Mass., Dec. to, 1S76. 



DAMNATION 227 

nings. So far as we do behold human life, there stand out the two 
great possibilities. In Buddha, in Socrates, in Mohammed, in Swe- 
denborg, in all nations and peoples, have these two ideas lain side by- 
side, as we see them in the New Testament. By every analogy which 
we know, the two ways of human life that Jesus pointed out — one 
broad, leading to loss, the other narrow but to gain — extend into the 
immortal world : there, as here, each soul will pursue what it loves, 
and seek that which it enjoys. If here we learn to love intrigue and 
power and falsehood and excitement, we shall seek them over there, 
as certainly as we shall seek honesty and purity and peace. Nor do 
the two roads less diverge, merely because, the beginnings of diver- 
gence are often imperceptible. . . . 

The finite cannot comprehend the infinite. We are to judge of 
what is to come by what is, — not by the goodness of God. Any 
theologian could prove from the goodness of God that no such world 
as this could ever be, — that no such thing as evil or imperfection could 
exist ; but facts would refute him. We can only reason from what 
is, to prove in the first place the goodness of God. In this life, we 
see good men sometimes become evil, and evil men break off and 
grow good. I know of no warrant for saying that those who con- 
tinue to increase in evil during this life will increase in evil forever, 
or that those who here increase in good will so increase forever. We 
may speculate, but conjecture is not knowledge. We know the 
tendency : we know the momentum of habit is such that Christ's 
words are true, that there is danger in one way, safety in the other. 
All heroic and consecrated effort is based on the possibility of being 
overcome by temptation, and the counter possibility of overcoming 
and experiencing the ineffable glory. ... 

If eternity has no finality, we cannot speak of what will finally 
happen. The doctrine that the righteous and the wicked are to be 
assembled and separated — the righteous welcomed to heaven, and 
the wicked sentenced and driven to everlasting torments — is prob- 
ably an error made originally by interpreting certain expressions too 
literally. The awful fact is not that God ever sentences a man to be 
where he does not wish to be, but that a human being should ever 
choose dark and debased surroundings. . . . Christ has sometimes 
been spoken of as carrying in his person the sins of the whole world. 
He evidently carried upon his spirit a load of mountain weight. But 
we may reasonably say it was a clear and sympathetic perception of 
the two kinds of life possible to man; of the joy, peace, and glory 
consequent upon the one, and the unrest, remorse, and darkness 
attendant upon the other. . . . No feebler terms than '"hell" and 
"condemnation," "heaven" and "joy of the Lord" could fully 
express his idea of the destinations. 

Mr. Bisbee's "warnings of some imminent danger to the 
human soul " recall Milton's, — 

Long is the way, 
And hard, that out of hell leads up to light. 



228 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

His words, "There, as here, each soul will pursue what it 
loves," etc., were in a subsequent discourse explained as fol- 
lows : — 

Even if it were possible, as Swedenborg asserts, for a man to gain 
a preponderating love of good or ill, so that he could but choose to 
go in one direction or the other, I do not see why he should never be 
able to reject the evil love, and gain the good in the future. ... I 
have never yet met a man so degraded that he did not btlirve in the 
good, and wish his children trained to its love and practice. There 
is great variety of opinion as to what will bring highest good; but the 
faith of the vile is in the good, as well as that of the good themselves. 
I have seen men going into greater evils, as long as I saw them at all : 
the miserliness of the miser grows upon him; the 8 >f the 

sot deepens with years; the hardness of the hard-hearted is stonier, 
the longer it continues ; the lust of the lustful is more shameless and 
accursed. I see enough to appall me at the thought of going in that 
direction. At the same time, I do not see that a human being can 
reach that condition in which there is no hope of his deliverance. 
So far as I know> there is a protest of the nature against the corrup- 
tion practised, a protest that can never be entirely silenced. 

In studying the laws of God as I see them operating here, I find 
that the whole race is slowly lifting. The cruelty of the view- 
less cruel than it was: the lower and the higher classes rise together. 
I do not see any tendency in this life for one great body of people to 
go into deeper and deeper barbarism, and another class to go into 
higher and higher enlightenment ; but all humanity mounts step by 
step into a better condition. I judge of the future ee in 

the present. The law of unfoldment which links the'highest to the 
lowest, which will not let the few ascend, unless they take others with 
them, which makes every soul neighb other soul, — that 

law will accomplish greater and greater things : 

I have not the slightest idea that the titr. me when all men 

will be free from further desire, activity, struggle, and 
we rise in the scale of being in this world, we learn to see certain 
things as evil which once were not evil to us. The state that I am in 
now will look to me like a terrible state to be in, though 
pleasing and delightful. If two men are ascendin_ i and 

keep at equal distance apart, one will see the other as being below 
him all the way, though both ascend. As that v 

fortable in homes is now looked upon ertv, so that which is 

comfortable now will in some future day be looked up< 
And this has always been ano^ will forever be, so far as apt 
There will be that below us to shun, that ah 
sublimer endeavor. To me, heaven and hell art 
below is hell, and that above is heaven ; but the movement is 
sal and eternal. So far as I see, there will be all there is 

now, and as there alwavs was, something to shun, something 
win; yet the vast multitude, children of the same Infinite, rising into 



DAMNATION 229 

wider, higher, sweeter, and more blissful reception of that Infinite. 
As I expect to be the same soul or being there as here, so I expect 
God will be the same, and condit ; ons of advancement the same. 
The separation of the righteous and the wicked there will be only by 
the laws that separate them here ; and there will be no fixed state in 
which one must stay there more than here. 

Let him, then, who would learn how to live a life of bliss by 
and by learn to live a life of cleanliness, temperance, usefulness, 
courage, and efficiency here. The scholar who understands best the 
grade which he is in is best prepared for the grade into which he 
shall be promoted. 

The child opens his eyes upon the wonder of the world, and comes 
to a knowledge of his powers little by little. In myself, I was never 
more a child, never more on the threshold of all possible good, than 
I am to-day. That which I have attained gives me no greater sense 
of completeness than that which I had as a child. The power to com- 
prehend only reveals more and more to comprehend. The power 
to enjoy but reveals more and more to enjoy. The little country 
town* of my childhood was as much to me as all New England 
to-day; and the New England of my childhood was as much as all 
the world of to-day. Slowly, by toil and pain, there has come to me 
a more sacred friendship, a deeper worship, a vaster thought, a more 
abundant delight. If this may continue ; if the way may still conduct 
me into higher sensations, into greater knowledge, into more divine 
love ; if the future shall open and open and open ; if I may ever 
pursue something, as I have here; if joy shall forever go with good, 
and pain with evil, as here ; if I may draw closer to better hearts, and 
draw out more of the f athomlessness of my being ; if this may be, 
just this, step by step, little by little, — I shall not ask, for I cannot 
conceive, a more glorious destiny.t 

In confirmation of Mr. Bisbee's testimony upon the relations 
between desire, activity, and happiness, comes Cowper's : — 

Lives spent in indolence, and therefore sad. . . . 

Absence of occupation is not rest, 

A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed. 

In idleness there is perpetual despair. — Thomas Carlyle. 

If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak 
with certainty), mv happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, 
the scanty numbers of the Caliph of Spain ; and I shall not scruple to 

f _ *West Perby, Vt., overlooking an unusually grand landscape of lake, moun- 
tains, hills, and villages. 

t To those who have heard the abov » discourse (of whom the writer was one) 
there is a peculiarly touching pathos in the peroration, "If this may continue,'] etc. 
A few months after its delivery, on the eve of an anticipated vacation, Mr. Bisbee 
preached with equal eloquence on a collateral theme, abridged the closing exercise 
including the benediction, descended the pulpit stairs, was stricken with apoplexy, 
and soon the meek and noble spirit was released to its "more glorious destiny." 



230 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

add that many of them are due to the pleasing labor of the present 
composition. — Edward Gibbon. 

The reference is to " Abdalrahman, the Just," who, not long- 
before his death, A.D. 790, had assumed the title of Kir. 
Cordova. He testified : — 

I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace, beloved 
by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by allies. 
Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call; 
nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting t 
felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the da-. 
pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: thev 
amount to fourteen. O man, place not thy confidence in this world ! 

Gibbon's testimony is well supplemented by two women's \ — 

For ages, happiness has been represented as a huge pr >tone, 

impossible to find, which people seek h 

Happiness is a mosaic, composed of a thousand little vhich 

separately and of themselves have little value, but which, united 
art, form a graceful design — Mmc. Emili de Girardin* 

The happiest women, like the nappies is, have no 1, 

George Eliot. 

^ Another ripe reasoner hereon. heaven to con- 

sist of "heavenly knowledge, love, and | hell : — 

Suppose that each man is tested by a sliding arranged, not 

only according to his goodness and wicke rding 

to his opportunities and advantages. Then, it would follow t 
pretty bad man, who had had no opportuni; rtunities, 

would go to heaven; and a pretty good man, made 

equal use of his better opportuniti to he!!. Then, hell 

would contain many people much better than those in heaven. This 
is the dilemma. If only good people are to go to he.r. onlv 

the bad to hell, then those will be punished for not be ; I whi> 

have never had any opportunity of being so and who could not help 
being bad. But, if each man is rewarded or punished according t 
efforts to do right, taking into account all the circuit then 

good and bad people will be mixed together in heaven, and other 
good and bad people will be mixed together in hell. If heaven be a 
place and hell another place, it is impossible to escape this difficultv. 
But if heaven be inward happiness and peace, and hell be inn 
dissatisfaction and unrest, then the difficultv disappears. )\ 
as a man is true to his conscience and his heart, he enters in: 

L nW i ■ J? eaven; J ust so far as he is false to ir - h " »t0 an inu 

nell. The worm that never dies is conscience. . 

The conception Jesus had of God as a father is utterh 5ed to 

the usual doctrine of probation. Could earthly t .: his 



DAMNATION 23 1 

children on trial in this way? Could he take his little ones and test 
them as a manufacturer tests his goods, and, fixing an' arbitrary mark 
of excellence, reject all that do not come up to it? No! ten times 
no ! Those who are low down and far off are the very ones the good 
earthly and heavenly Father cares for the most. The Son of God 
comes to seek and to save those who are lost. . . . 

The sight of a heavenly Father who keeps bringing up the rear- 
guard of humanity, and goes out to seek and save the lost sheep, has 
worked on the world to create a different civilization. It tends to 
unite men in a common mode of life. Out of the fatherhood of God 
comes the brotherhood of man. The new heavens make the new 
earth. — Dr. J. F. Clarke {Common Sense in Religion, p. 150). 

A still more emphatic " No ! " has been uttered as follows : — 

This avenging God, rancorous torturer, who burns his creatures in a 
slow fire ! When they tell me that God made himself a man, I prefer 
to recognize a man who made himself a god. — Alfred de Mnsset. 

One horn of the dilemma propounded by Dr. Clarke recalls 
the declaration of " Father'' Edward Taylor that, if Mr. Emer- 
son was sent to perdition, the best people would migrate with 
him. Mr. Spurgeon's remark, " He that believeth shall be 
saved, let his sins be ever so many; he that believeth not shall 
be damned, let his sins be ever so few," suggests a passage 
in a Chicago clergyman's open letter to an earnest literalist : — 

You say that no sinner can be saved who does not actually 
appropriate the blood of Christ with the conscious acceptance of the 
imputed righteousness which he possesses ; and this, though honest 
of purpose and doing the best he knows. Take the saved on these 
terms, even in this very city as a basis, and you will have to figure 
very liberally to make in Europe and America more than 40,000,000, 
— the present population of the United States. Now, America is 
said to contain about 85,519,000 human beings; Europe, 309,178,000; 
Asia, 824,548,000; Africa, 199,521,000; Australia and Polynesia, 
4,748,000. In view of these figures, who rules the universe, God or 
the devil ? Is this the best that the grace of God can do for man- 
kind?— Dr. W. H. Ryder {Open Letter to Dwight L. Moody)* 

Which recalls the remark reported to have been made by 
H. W. Beecher in a sermon at St. Paul, Minn., about the same 
date : " As to worshipping a God who damns men through all 
creation, I cannot worship the devil, and that is only a demo- 
niacal God."' Nevertheless, nobody who has lived through his 
(or her) teens will deny that a single folly — not to say sin — 
will for a lifetime remind one of the princess who could not 

*See Art. xviii. of the Thirty-nine Articles as to who "are to be had accursed." 



232 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

sleep on a hundred beds of down because of the little pebble 
underneath them all. There is a sense in which the Scotch 
literalist was not very illogical, though he may have chosen his 
premises inadvertently. "But,*' said his friend, " according to 
your statement, nobody is likely to be saved except yourself 
and your brother Alexander!" '-Aweel. I'm nae sae sure 
aboot Sandy, neither." This view of "the Eternal Goodness " 
reminds New Englanders of the Hopkins u logic linked and 
strong" that made the test of a condition of salvation the being 
willing to be damned * Welcome, Whittier ! — 

I see the wrons: that round me lies, 

I feel the guilt within ; 
I hear with groan and travail cries 

The world conf 

Yet in the maddening maze of things, 

And tossed by storm and flood, 
To one fix rit clings: 

I know that God is good ! 

Not mine to look when cherubim 

And seraphs may 
But nothing can be <;ood in him 

Which evil is i:. 

•See in the Christian Register of Jan. 4. J. L 

Withrow, on "The Unknown Number of the Lost, which perhu 
most advanced "orthodox" thought on t! See aLso at page 2 

editorial by Samuel J. Barrows, 'qu< I ranees of Drs. Lewis 

Du Moulin, Nathanael Emmoib 
and others, and especially Krau; 



Chapter XLIII. 



PERPETUATION. 

What are the Five Principal Arguments in Behalf of the 
Immortality of the Soul t 

(i) The metaphysical based on the immateriality, etc. Con- 
sciousness teaches that the soul is one and indivisible, — not 
made up of parts like the body. The body is multiform, the 
soul uniform. 

The soul is never so hampered by its enthralment within the body 
as when it loves. — O. S. Fowler. 

Some have conceived a metaphysical argument from our 
notions of time and space. 

Eternity is a negative idea clothed with a positive name. It sup- 
poses in that to which it is applied a present existence, and is the 
negation of a beginning or of an end of that existence. — Archbishop 
William Paley. 

(2) The teleological, based on the fact that the soul is adapted 
to perpetual progress, and has a corresponding desire and ex- 
pectation. Not to Milton alone is welcome 



White-handed Hope, 
Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings ! 



John Milton. 



No man may say at night 
His goal is reached; the hunger for the light 
Moves with the star; our thirst will not depart, 
Howe'er we drink. 'Tis what before us goes, 
Keeps us aweary, will not let us lay 
Our heads in dreamland, though the enchanted palm 
Rise from our desert ; though the fountain grows 
Up in our path, with slumber's flowing balm : 
The soul is o'er the horizon far away. 

John James Piatt. 
And as I watch the line of light that plays 

Along the smooth wave toward the burning west, 
I long to tread that golden path of rays, 

And think 'twould lead to some bright isle of rest. 

Thomas Moore. 



234 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

The soul on earth is an immortal cuest 

Compelled to starve at an unreal fe 

A spark which upward tends by nature's force ; 

A stream diverted from its native 

A drop dissevered from the boundless sea; 

A moment parted from eterr,: 

A pilgrim panting for the rest to come; 

An exile anxious for his native home. 

.>uih More. 

If man has a capacity for a continued existence, and no con- 
tinued existence has been provided for him, this is the only 
exception we know to the rule that every power planted in the 
nature of God's creatures has its appropriate sphere already 
designed and prepared for it in the structure of the 

universe. "The human heart,' es to believe 

in a universe without a purpose/' A recent anonymous writer 
believes with Mr. Whittier that, 

Since he who know* our nee> 
Somehow, somewhere, meet we m 

with even the children who have loved us I 

the old sense, celestial being 

know nothing, believe noth ; love, 

working through the iin :i. Tru k, means 

messengers. And, no doubt, ■ love, in human 

form, have been transfigured by the loving vision of those who 

have been helped. All this and the whole 

on the earth goes to show that the great ty we k 

our own soul, is not a combinat i, but 

partakes of the divine nature. 

Thou wilt not I 

Thou ma, 

He thinks he v. 
And thou 

AlfrtJ rrmxrsem* 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean-bed, 
And yet anon r 

And tricks his ugled ore 

Flames in the 

Jok 

Heaven may have happiness as utterly ankn - the gift 

of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. :al love, pure 
and exalted, founded on charms both mental an 
stitutes the highest happiness on earth, ma v. for 

the contrary, also form the lowest happi And it 

would appear consonant with the administra: CC in 

other matters that there should be such a link be! I and 

heaven ; for, in all cases, a chasm seems to be purp< « Jed, pru- 

dente Deo, Thus, the material world has its link nade 



PERPETUATION 235, 

to shake hands, as it were, with the vegetable, the vegetable with the 
animal, the animal with the intellectual, and the intellectual with 
what we may be allowed to hope of the angelic. — Caleb C. Cotton. 

All served, all serving ; nothing stands alone ; 
The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown. 

A lexander Pope. 

This argument has been well presented in a sermon on Gen. 
i., 31, "God saw everything was very good," preached in the 
Broadway Unitarian Church, South Boston, Oct. 12, 1879: — 

There is no alternative but to assume that even crime and brutality 
are serving the higher order of the universe in some way we cannot 
fathom, but in God's way. To make a devil responsible for the bad 
and God only accredited with the good is not the way in which 
matters are disposed in earthly courts. " He who does wrong through 
another does it himself," says a legal proverb. Who made and takes 
care of Satan ? 

The solution that was the fancy of the childhood of our race 
settled nothing. But to grapple with the fact that God permits wrong 
of every sort, and to set it beside the fact that as we look backward 
we find the orderly and beautiful ever rising out of the chaotic and 
hideous, is to give solid foundation for the only creed the wise man 
can entertain, that the perfect God can be trusted in his dark deeds 
as in his bright ones, in clouds and tempests as with mid-day glory of 
the sun. Yes, over all, through all, in all, is the beneficent power 
whose march is devious and perplexing, but whose plan and final 
results are eternally good. And man may go to his work, and study 
the world with full hope and serenity. — George A. Thayer. 

For right is right, since God is God ; 

And right the day must win. 
To doubt would be disloyalty ; 
To falter would be sin. 

George Sta,7iley Faber. . 
Come what will, then, I will trust thee, 

For I know that thou art true ; 
And the ill that often must be 

Shall not hide the good from view. 
With thy tender arms enclosing 
And thy pitying eye on mine. 
In its light and love reposing, 
Never let my soul repine. 

Virtue Hall Bumliam^ 

The soul, how can she but immortal be, 

When with the motions of both will and wit 
She still aspireth to eternity, 

And never rests till she aspire to it ? . . . 
At first, her mother earth she holdeth dear, 

And doth embrace the world and worldlv things : 
She flies close by the ground, and hovers here, 

And mounts not up with her celestial wings ; 
Yet, under heaven, she cannot light on aught 

That with her heavenly nature doth agree ; 



2.36 ' RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought, 

She cannot in this world contented be. 
For who did ever yet, in honor, wealth, 

Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find ? 
Who ever ceased to wish when he had health. 

Or having wisdom was not vexed in mind? 
Then, as a bee that anv doth fall, 

Which seem sweet flowers with lust ;nd gay, 

She lights on that and this, and tasteth all. 

But pleased with none doth rise and so v 
So, when the soul finds here no true content. 

And, like Noah's dove, can no sure footing take, 
She dolh return from whence she first « 

And flies to Him that first her wings did make. 

Sir John Da- 

The minstrel's strain may swell or bend 

To chances of his mood 

But, if 'tis kindled with true I 
A theme of purpose thrills from end to end ! 

We may not scan like mortal's lay 

The miqhty metres that rehearse. 

The Epos of the I 
But yet the Great Poutes makes a! way ! 

Our grandsires sang in pious ... 
" God moves in a l 
l wondro 
Conceived ! Is it too wundrou 

*r Paulus I 'ctutus ( T/u Sfitctator\ 

(3) The inchoatal, based on the fact of insoluble problems. 
We are all, in our mind and our life, brought face to face with 
questions to which no sufficient an- .1 be found. 

Every generation of men cornea in turn to look at these paradoxes, 
these antinomies of the reason. How can an infinite being create a finite 
world? What is the origin of evil? What is the relation between 
freedom and law, liberty in man and the providence of God ? We 
are obliged by the law of our thought to ask these questions, and are 
unable to answer them. Do they not then vindicate an hereafter, 
where the solution will be found? Arc thev not like the sentence 
written at the foot of an unfinished Story, — "T > be continued in our 
next"? — Dr. J. F. Clarke {Common Religion^ p. 207^ 

The lyfe so short, the craft so long to leme, 
TV assay so hard, so sharpe the conquering. 

frey CM*: 

God's greatness flows around our incomplete: 
Round our restlessness, his it 

drowning. 

God, who keeps his word with the birds and fishes in their migratory 
Instinct, will keep his word with man. — Ruth Pn 

Our dissatisfaction with anv other solution is the blazing evidence 
of our immortality. — Ralph IV. Emerson. 



PERPETUATION . 237 

The truest end of life is to know the life that never ends. — 
William Penn. 

Heaven will be the sweet surprise of a perfect explanation. — Dr. 
Robert Price. 

To God shall ye all return, and he will enlighten you concerning 
the subjects of your disputes. — Mohammed. 

(4) The rejuvenatal, based on the fact of mental rejuvenation. 
How often, while the body grows older, does the spirit seem to 
grow younger, fresher, more active ! Goethe said of Schiller, 
11 He went on and on, for thirty-eight years, never resting, 
never ceasing from new activity and fresh accomplishments." 
Meanwhile, the body of Schiller was steadily decaying. The 
cases of Wesley, Channing, J. Q. Adams, and a multitude of 
others, show that death may take possession of the feeble body 
and yet have no dominion over the ascending soul. They 
recall Francis Joubert's remark, " He seemed to be a soul that 
had met with a body, and tried to make the best of it." Such 
a one reminds Dr. J. F. Clarke of a seal with the device of a 
sky-rocket, and the motto Dum vivo, volo, — " While I live, I 
ascend." 

He was one of a lean body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting 
for anger at the clog of his body, desired to fret a passage through. 
it. — Thomas Fuller. 

Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbin- 
gers to heaven ; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the 
chinks of her sickness-broken body. — Thomas FitMer. 

The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made. 
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become, 
As they draw near to their eternal home. 

Edimmd IValler* 
Death had illumined the Land of Sleep ; 

And his lifeless body lay 
A worn-out fetter, that the soul 

Had broken and thrown away. 

Henry IV. Longfellow. 

(5) The absolute, based on the significance of our person- 
ality. This, however, may be considered to combine the four 
others, and possibly also certain arguments from analogy; for 
instance, the suspension of consciousness during sleep, the 
spring awakening, the chrysalis, etc. But, after all the arguing, 
Dr. James Martineau's remark is not without truth, — "We do 
not believe immortality because we have proved it, but we for- 
ever try to prove it because we believe it." The wish begets 



238 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

the thought. Not Fichte alone has exclaimed, "As often as 
I hear of some undeserved wretchedness, my thoughts rest on 
that world where all will be made straight, and where the labors 
of the sorrowful will end in joy." We clutch and cherish 
every straw thereon in the poets. Some of the Night 
Thoughts are not "parsed and passed." 

Look nature through ; 'tis revolution all ; 

All change, no death. . . All sinks to reascend, 

Emblems of man who passes, not expires. . . . 

Still seems it strange that thou shouldst live forever? 

Is it less strange that thou shouldst live at all ? 

This is a miracle, and that no more. 

Dr. Edward Young. 

Man, thou shalt never die ! Celestial voices 
Hymn it unto our souls. 

Richard H. Dana. 

It may be 
The thoughts that visit us we know not whence, 
Sudden as inspiration, are the whispers 
Of disembodied spirits speaking to <us, 
As friends, who wait outside a prison wall, 
Through the barred windows speak to those within. 

H. W. Longfellow {Atlantic Monthly, February, 1883). 

'Tis the divinity that stirs within us, . . . 

And intimates eternity to man. . . 

Aye, thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, 

Unhurt amidst the war of elements, 

The wreck of matter and the crush of worlds. 

Joseph Add 
Life, — the childhood of Immortal: 

Goethe. 
And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
The brightness it may veil, when lofty thought 
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 
And love and life contend in it. 

y:y B. Shelley. 
To die is landing on some friendly shore, 
Where billows never break nor tempests roar. 
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'ti.<= o'er. 

William Garth (1670-17 19). 

What is death? To go out like a light, and in a sweet trance to 
forget ourselves and all the passing phenomena of the day as we 
forget the phantoms of a fleeting dream; to form as in a dream new 
connections with God's world; to enter into a more exalted sphere, 
and to make a new step up man's graduated ascent of creation. — 
J. Heinrich D. Zschokke. 

Our great thoughts, our great affections, the truths of our life, 
never leave us. Surely, they cannot separate from our consciousness, 
shall follow it whithersoever that shall go, and are of their nature 
divine and immortal.— William M. Thackerav. 



PERPETUATION 239 

There are treasures laid up in the heart, — treasures of charity, 
piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with 
him beyond death, when he leaves this world. — Buddha. 

Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires, and ani- 
mates, is something celestial, divine, and consequently imperishable. 
— Aristotle. 

All men's souls.are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are 
immortal and divine. — Socrates. 

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born 
things fly to their native seat. — Marcus Antoninus. 

The look of sympathy, the gentle word 
Spoken so low that only angels heard, 
The secret act of pure self-sacrifice, 
Unseen by men, but marked by angels' eyes, 
These are not lost. 

The happy dreams that gladdened all our youth, 
When dreams had less of self and more of truth, 
The childhood's faith, so tranquil and so sweet, 
Which sat like Mary at the Master's feet, 
These are not lost. 

The kindly plan devised for others' good, 
So seldom guessed, so little understood, 
The quiet, steadfast love that strove to win 
Some wanderer from the ways of sin, 
These are not lost. 

Not lost, O Lord ! for in thy city bright 
Our eyes shall see the past by clearer light ; 
And things long hidden from our gaze below 
Thou wilt reveal, and we shall surely know 
These are not lost. 

Richard Meicalf. 

And as to the later prose literature on immortality, perhaps 
few riper thinkers thereon can be found than Emerson, Bellows, 
and one or two others now to be quoted, each supplementing 
the other as to our personality's blending with God. 

We cannot prove our faith by syllogisms. The argument refuses 
to form in the mind. A conclusion, an inference, a grand augury, is 
ever hovering; but attempt to ground it, and the reasons are all 
vanishing and inadequate. You cannot make a written theory or 
demonstration of this as you can an orrery of the Copernican astron- 
omy. It must be sacredly treated. Speak of the mount in the 
mount. Not by literature or theology, but only by rare integrity, 
by a man permeated and perfumed with airs of heaven, — with man- 
liest or womanliest enduring love, — can the vision be clear to a use 
the most sublime. And hence the fact that in the minds of men the 
testimony of a few inspired souls has had such weight and penetra- 
tion. You shall not say : " O my bishop, O my pastor, is there any 



240 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

resurrection? What do you think? Did Dr. Channing believe that 
we should know each other ? did Wesley ? did Butler ? did Fen- 
elon?" What questions are these ! Go read Milton, Shakspere, or 
any truly ideal poet. Read Plato, or any seer of the interior realities. 
Read St. Augustine, Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant. Let any master 
simply recite to you the substantial laws of the intellect, and in the 
presence of the laws themselves you will never ask such primarv- 
school questions. 

Is immortality only an intellectual quality, or, shall I say, only an 
energy, there being no passive? He has it, and he alone, who gives 
life to all names, persons, things, where he comes. No religion, not 
the wildest mythology, dies for him ; no art He vivines 

he touches. Future state is an illusion for the ever-present state. 
It is not length of life, but depth of life. It is not duration, but a 
taking of the soul out of time, as all high action of the mind does: 
when we are living in the sentiments, we ask n< l x>ut time. 

The spirit world takes place, — that which ie same. But 

see how the sentiment is wise. J nothing, but the 

influence of him took people out of time, and the-. -.-mal. 

A great integrity makes us immortal; an admiration, a deep 1 
strong will, arms us above fear. It make memorable. We 

say we lived years in that hour. I esteemed 

by mankind the bringer of the doctrine never 

once weak or sentimental; he is very abste a; he 

never preaches the personal immortality; while 1 1 had 

both allowed themselves to overstep the stern I 
gratify the people with that picture. 

How ill agrees this majestical immortali: religion with the 

frivolous population! Will you build 1 mice? 

you offer empires to such as cannot set 

order? Here are people who cannot dispose of a day; an 
hangs heavy on their hands; and will :'er them rolling ages 

without end? But this is the way we rise With: 
thought is a higher thought; within the character he ex 
a higher character. The youth puts off the illu the child, trie 

man puts off the ignorance and tumultuoi; 
ceeding thence, puts off the egotism of manhood, and Ix 
last a public and universal soul. 1 I eater height- 

also rising to realities; the outer relat 

out, he, entering deeper into God, Go. im, until the 

ment of egotism falls, and he is with e will and the 

immensity of the First Cause.— A^/-} Waldo Em. 
Social Aims, p. 28c, ff.). 

Mr. Emerson's pithy " not length of life, but depth of life" 
well supplements Dr. Samuel Johnsons remark, " A 
and a philosopher may be equalh ,ut not equallv 

happy : happiness consists in the multiplicitv o 



PERPETUATION 241 

sciousness." Also Dr. James Martineau's, " He whose heart 
beats the quickest lives the longest." And others : — 

We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives 
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. 

Philip J. Bailey. 

One crowded hour of glorious life 
Is worth a world without a name. 

Sir Walter Scott. 

Mr. Emerson's averment as to the final blending with God 
reaffirms one or two of the Persian sage : — 

Taking the first footstep with the good thought, the second with 
the good word, and the third with the good deed, I entered paradise. 
. . . All flows out from the Deity, and all must be absorbed in him 
again. — Zoroaster. 

And this recalls Derzhavin's " Ode to God," which has been 
translated from Russian into Chinese and Japanese, by order 
of the emperors, and hung up, embroidered in gold, in one of 
their principal temples. The following extract is from Sir 
John Bowring's translation thereof : — 

What am I ? 
Nought ! But the effluence of thy light divine, 

Pervading worlds, hath reached my bosom too. 
Yes, in my spirit doth thy spirit shine, 

As shines the sunbeam in a drop of dew. 
Nought! But I live, and on Hope's pinions fly 

Eager toward thy presence ; for in thee 
I live and breathe, and dwell, aspiring high, 

Even to the throne of thy divinity. 

I am, O God, and surely thou must be ! 

The next seer presents most eloquently all the four argu- 
ments combined, but emphasizes the teleological : — 

No one thing in this universe can be of a deeper moment to a whole 
man than his own proper personal life. You may talk to him until 
doomsday about being lost in the Infinite, but he clings to himself as 
the true factor. Nay, the very angels are well enough; but he would 
not be an angel, and why should he ? Angels have no mothers to 
croon over them, — by what he can make out, — or fathers to romp 
with them, . . . nor fell in love, ... or made homes, ... or fought 
strong battles with human brain and hands, or wept over graves, or 
were stormed by grand utterances or great books. . . . 

Nor would he be Abraham or Moses or John the beloved. He has 
solved the problem of his own personal identity, and would not have 
it resolved into the grandest presence that ever trod the earth. 
These years with their clustering memories, mingled as they are with 



242 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

sin and sorrow and pain, are still his years. They stand out clear 
and free from the vast and awful mystery of the past, and reveal to 
him his own life. A poor thing, he says, but mine own ; full of mis- 
takes, but mine own; haunted with shadows that shake the heart, 
but mine own, so that I would not even have it lost in God. I want 
to keep track of myself. Send me where you will, but let me be 
aware that I am still this man who is now living a human life, and 
that those who are living human lives with me will be there in the 
mystery, not unclothed but clothed upon; then I shall rest in i 

He will tell you also that this seem .ill things, fair, as 

between God and man. He has given me a nature, 1 ) like 

his own that I cannot give it up. lid not d and stand 

justified before his own universe, if tfa 
this out and clothe it with perfection. The tree in nv. 
nine blossoms where it ripens one apple, but 
the tree. The dumb things let their you: rth to 1 

and forget them. The flocks and hei h other: 

one is taken and another left, and t 
do they regret their mista; 
life rounds itself, and is complete when tl 
afternoon, the organism of a Irani 
of a life before this, and no prem 

the blossoms fall from the tar< c out 

of my flock, my children go forth ft d fricn 

taken from my side. I cannot lofl | this 

eternal longing after them. They are part 1 
shards and shreds of the who 
being once mine, they are not mine fort 
own life, I see where I have m 
I am only a learner, and want to learn, and I 
to some noble use. What can all th 
haunts me, but a promise of completeness. Ha 
mand another life which will link if 

the heavens this is a broken trust, and bid th have 

seen to me, or remand the race to an t 

Now, it seems clear to me that this c 
We hold this right to see the account come 

ground, if on no other. These searchi nd regrets are the 

vouchers for it, their long enduring the ^ood. 

And this deep love for the life we 1: n pro- 

portion to the worth of it to the e that 

what we gain through this life may not be 1 done 

with these bodies,— what is all this, though the: 
word about it, but the hold of the human 

c,l er? /nd this is the mind of Christ touching :eries 

of life and death,— that it will be all rig:. in the line of 

our longing. The solution of the problem lies 

lain — in the Gospels, and in our power . their noble meanings 

and make the truth they tell our own. feel the 



PERPETUATION 243 

world to come, we must come close to this Christ who brought life 
and immortality to light, and said : " Let not your heart be troubled : 
ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are 
many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you." — Robert 
Collyer {Unity Pulpit, ii., No. 20, p. 7, ff.). 

Nature has created something more glorious even than mind. Her 
highest, brightest, divinest work is that which binds us to one 
another, that mysterious emotion we call sympathy, in the widest 
sense, the feeling for and with one another, the delighting in one 
another, the working with one another, the coming ever and ever 
nearer to one another. I say that is nature's most wonderful work, 
and that is purely spiritual ; and for that earth and time provide no 
adequate sphere, either of growth or exercise. Shall there not be 
for that a resurrection? Is there, as the men of science tell us, is 
there an unseen universe into which myriads upon myriads of atoms 
pass in the ceaseless flow of matter, and is there no unseen universe 
to which the lord and master of matter goes ? Is there a resurrec- 
tion for molecules and not for memory, continuity for the unconscious 
and annihilation for the conscious ? Does persistent and forceful 
nature work for life through all the lower stages and never fail, and 
then at the climax break down and work only for death ? Does the 
unerring energy through countless ages pursue its conquering course 
of development, working through great processes of evolution, and 
with mighty, far-seeing laws aim at the preservation of the fittest, and 
then, having at such vast expenditure got the fittest, does the gigantic 
work break down, and all- end, at last, in the fiasco of a grave ? — John 
Page Hopps {Beside the Still Waters). 

To respect the person of woman in her weakness, of the citizen in 
his poverty, of the humblest man in his own inability to protect his 
rights, — this is the triumph of public morality, of law and social 
freedom. Is this blessed, elevating, ennobling principle, which really 
makes the person of man sacred, not an irresistible voice in defence 
of the precious significance and prophecy of personality ? Will God, 
who planted this principle, allow the mere death of the body to 
loosen the very centralizing principle of man's soul ? Will his moral 
and intellectual faculties disperse into thin air as the gases fly when 
the bubble bursts, or will that sacred polarity of his being hold them 
to his central, self-conscious essence, and continue to clothe his Ego, 
himself, in their beautiful spiritual folds ? I cannot doubt what the 
answer of a true philosophy must be. But again, the sense of per- 
sonality and faith in immortality have been inseparably connected 
and proportioned to each other. A weak sense of personality, a weak 
feeling of right and duty, a weak feeling of responsibility, leave a 
weak hold upon, a feeble longing for, a doubtful or apathetic state of 
mind in regard to, immortality. A powerful sense of personal rights 
and duties is equivalent to a strong sense of personality. And this 
sense has always gone with the thirst, expectation, and prophecy of 
immortality. — Dr. Henry W. Bellows {Christian Register, March 
27, 1880). 



244 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

These " truths that wake to perish never M remind us of Mr. 
Collyer's boyhood neighbor of Rydal Mount : — 

O joy that in our embers 

Is something that doth live, 

That nature yet remembers 

What was so fugit: 
The thought of our pa>: ne doth breed 

Perpetual benediction. Not indeed 
For that which is most worthy to be blest, 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of childhood, whether busy or at r 
With new-fledged hope still V. his breast, — 

The song of thanks and praise, 
But for th 
Of sense and < 
Falli 

Blank misgivin.. 
Moving about in world > 

High instincts before iture 

Did tremble lik 
But 

The 

Which, be th 

Are yet the fountain I our day, 

Are yet a 

Uphold us, ch ake 

:n momen: 
rnal silence ; truths that wake 
To perish ne\ 
Which neither listlessnett, nor mad endeavor, 

all that ia 

Can utterly ab< 

He of calm weather, 

Though inland far we be, 
Our souls ha . ca 

C her, 

And see the childr on the shore, 

And hear the might . 

U—rtk {Intimations 0/ Immortal:: 

The soul is never satisfied with anv explanation of its future 
which, at any present moment, it can fully understand. We de 
future which can be fullv comprehended' onlv in that future 
must grow to the revelation. The m all made pi . 

becomes substantially like the present or the past, and a 
precluded. We lose interest in what 

after upon a level plain, with no mysterious heights to inspire us 
lead us on.—/. Frederick But 

Consolation for the death of Louis Blanc must be sought in the 
Shin r < S immort T a , ]it - v ;. f l or , lhe »« of he mcn 

shall hve forever. If a light has spent itself, the source of that light 
is not quenched.— Victor Huge. h 



PERPETUATION 245 

As to the comparative weight of the foregoing arguments, it 
has been said : — 

The Platonic idea that the soul is an indivisible unit has played 
a distinguished part in the argument for immortality, as a ground for 
the belief. So, too, has the idea that the soul is immaterial and 
therefore indestructible. But the immortal hope has seldom taken 
counsel with either of these ideas. Men " beholding the bright coun- 
tenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies " have 
strengthened their belief by these considerations; but men and 
-women who have seen the light of life go out in faces strong or fair 
have nourished their hopes upon a different diet. No indivisible unit 
was the man or woman or the little child whom we forever miss — 
nay, but a unit infinitely divisible, having for us an infinite variety 
of gleaming lights and tender shadows. No immaterial subject was 
it that we loved and that we hope to. 

Communion in spirit? Forgive ms, 

But I who am earthy and weak 
Would give all my incomes from dreamland 

For the touch of her hand on my cheek. 

Over against the philosopher's indivisible unit and his soul's imma- 
teriality, the natural man has set such poems as that little one [by 
Adaline D. T. Whitney] which sings : — 

God does not send us strange flowers every year ; 
When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places, 
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces, 
The violet is here. 

It all comes back, — the odor, grace, and hue, 
Each sweet relation of its life repeated ; 
Nothing is lost, no looking-for is cheated ; 
It is the thing we knew. 

So after the death-winter it will be : 
God will not put strange sights in heavenly places ; 
The old love will look out from the old faces ; 
Veilchen, I shall have thee. 

John W. Chadwick {The Commonwealth, 1882). 

There is a great mistake in teaching children that they have souls. 
They ought to be taught that they have bodies, and that their bodies 
die, but they themselves live on. 

Weep not for death ! 

'Tis but a fever stilled, 
A pain suppressed, a fear at rest, 

A solemn hope fulfilled. 
The moonshine on the slumbering deep 
Is scarcely calmer — wherefore weep ? 

Weep not for death ! 

The fount of tears is sealed ; 
Who knows how bright the inward light 

To those shut eyes revealed ? 
Who knows what peerless love may fill 
The heart that seems so cold and still ? 



246 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

One of the sweetest passages in the Bible is this one : " Under- 
neath are the everlasting arms." It is not often preached from ; per- 
haps because it is felt to be so much richer and more touching than 
anything we ministers can say about it. But what a vivid idea of in- 
fancy is resting in arms which maternal love never allows to become 
weary. Sick-room experiences confirm the im; vhen we have 

seen a feeble mother or sister lifted from the bed of pain by the 
stronger ones of the household. In the case of our heavenly 
Father, the arms are felt but not seen. The invisible secret support 
comes to the soul in its hours of weakness or trouble; for God k 
eth our feebleness, he remembers that we are but dust. — Theodore 
L. Cuyler. 

Transported May I 

Thou couldst : 

Who gave, took thee aw 
Come, child, and whisper peace to me. 

..t, or come to thee? 
I list to hear thy message 

" Cease, cease new grief to borrow 

. -t night I li 
" For MM I (Hi hath 1 

' ris bon 
Translated thou 
My cl ee, 

And bath rows endlessly." 

Bramspn A 

I have no power to look across the I 

To know, while hei 

But this 1 know, I shall Ik- God's. : 

if MM. 

And you shall short'' ^thened h: 

Is not the end, 

And that sometiiru - 

Conceals the fairest boon his nd. 

If we could push ajar tl ife. 

And stand within, and a!' 
We could interpret all th 

And for each n 

But not to-day. Then be content, poor he 

God's plans, like lilies, pui 
We must not tear tl 

Time will reveal the 1 
And if, through pat 

Where tired fee- 
When we shall clearly ki 

I think that we will 

We know in part ; the other | 

Is hid in God, and 01 
In points of glory on the heart 

That moves toward him in L. nea. 

i**e ^Z ten's H< ■• 



PERPETUATION 247 



We see but dimly through the mists and vapors : 

Amid these earthly damps, 
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers, 

May be heaven's distant lamps. 
There is no Death ! What seems so is transition. 

This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 

Whose ported we call Death. 



Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken 

The bond which nature gives, 
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, 

May reach her where she lives. 
Not as a child shall we again behold her ; 

For when, with raptures wild, 
In our embraces we again enfold her, 

She will not be a child ; 
But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion, 

Clothed with celestial grace, 
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion 

Shall we behold her face. 

Henry W. Longfellow. 

When for me the silent oar 

Parts the silent river, 
And I stand upon the shore 

Of the strange forever, 
Shall I miss the loved and known ? 
Shall I vainly seek mine own ? 

Can the ties that make us here 

Know ourselves immortal 
Drop away like foliage sere 

At life's inner portal ? 
What is holiest below 
Must forever live and grow. 

He who plants within our hearts 

All this deep affection, 
Giving when the form departs 

Fadeless recollection, 
Will but clasp the unbroken chain 
Closer when we meet again. 

Therefore dread I not to go 
O'er the silent river. . . . 

Lucy Larcom.* 

* Set to a sweet German melody, in The Sunnyside^ p. 102. 



Chapter XLIV. 



EXALTATION. 

What Two Views as to Christ's Intendment concerning 

Heave* 

(i) The localizing theory. (2) The evolutional. 

The first — seeking to realize, materialize, or localize heaven 
— is expressed in the hymn said to be translated from a Latin 
one of the ninth century, first in 161 6, and since variously,— a 
portion as follows : — 

Jerusalem, my happy home. 

O happy harbor of :': 

O sweet and pleasant soil ! 

In thee no sorrow shall be found, 

No death, no care, no toil. 

Apostles, martyrs, prophets there 

In holy converse stand ; 

And soon my saintly friends below 

Will join the glorious band. 

The first view interprets the simile of the shepherd and 
goats,* as indicating a second advent of Christ, a day of judg- 
ment, and a segregation of the righteous and the wicked; so 
also as to the declaration f that they who are in their gr. 
shall hear the voice of the Son of Man and shall come forth, 
they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, etc. 

There is a suggestion in Dr. Thomas Yo :*ral 

Philosophy that there may be a sphere of life, an order' of 
existence, still material, as distinct from the purely spiritual, 
and yet possessed of some specific property, which distin- 
guishes it from the matter of atomic constitution, of which our 
senses alone can take cognizance ; there may be supersensible, 
yet not purely immaterial, existences. 

Certain phenomena of the visible universe Suggest the supposition 
of an unseen universe, related to the present, vet of a different kind or 
order, out of which came the things which appear, and into which they 
shall be dissolved, enriching it as they pass into it. — the new heavens 

* Matt. xxv. t John v.. 



EXALTATION 249 

and the new earth of revelation. . . . They do not demonstrate its 
existence, for physical science never can prove the supersensible. 
— Dr. Newman Smyth {Old Faiths in New Light, p. 298). 

When clouds which hid the sun all day minister to his last glory 
with colors of ineffable tint and brilliancy, it seems a proclamation 
that, come what will in a world of gloom and tempest, beauty and 
visible glory still exist for man, and are a sign of him who made them. 
We could live without the sunset, but its delight pleads with our 
spirit. — Thomas Tyrwhitt. 

The second view is that the gospel writers (or redactors) 
colored some of the earlier utterances of Jesus with the lore of 
the current poetic literature of the day; for instance, the words, 
" an holy one coming down from heaven " ; * also, " and many 
of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to 
everlasting life" ; \ also "the judgment was set and the books 
were opened." { The doctrine of progress through this life 
and the next — of gradual abandonment to the Highest, and so 
a sharing of his perfection — has already been presented in the 
extract from a sermon by Rev. Herman Bisbee, § and in the 
passage from Mr. Emerson's essay on " Immortality." || 

Dr. Wm. E. Channing says : — 

As in the child we view the future man, so in man we are taught 
by the gospel to view the germ of the future angel. We are taught 
there is no height of excellence in the universe to which the human 
mind in the progress of eternity may not attain. . . . 

We shall be the same beings in heaven as on earth. We shall 
retain our present faculties. We shall probably, too, have bodies, — 
the eye to behold creation and receive its beauties, the ear to hear 
the voice of friendship and to receive the pleasures of harmony, and 
every sense refined and purified. — Memoirs, ii., pp. 22, 48. 

In this regard, Dr. Emanuel Swedenborg's views If were very- 
like those of Dr. Channing. And so we keep appealing to the 
seers. What was remarked in the last chapter, of our grasp- 
ing and hoarding every proof of immortality will apply to our 
yearnings for assurances of a blissful one. How every availa- 
ble analogy is watched and studied and cherished ! 

In the leaves that blow and perish 

In the space of a single hour, 
As the loves that most we cherish 

Die like the frailest flower, — 
In the living things whose living 

Withers or ere they bloom, 
He reads of the great thanksgiving 

Which breathes from the open tomb. 

*Dan. iv., 23. tDan. xii., 2. J Dan. vii., 10. 

§Chap. xlii , p. 22S. || Chap, xliii., p. 240. UN. J. D., n. 224. 



250 RECORDS OF JESU-S REVIEWED 

The bright spring leaves returning 

To the stem whence autumn's fell, 
And the heart of summer burning 

To change the winter's spell, 
The year that again repasses, 

The grain that again revives, 
Are signs on the darkened glasses 

That bar and bound our lives. 

I know how the glass must darken 

To my vision more and more, 
When the weak ear strains to hearken, 

When the faint eye glazes o'er ; 
But the glass shall melt and shiver. 

Once kissed by the fighting breath, 
And the light beyond the I 

Shine full in the face of Death. 

Strong set in a strong affection, 

We look to the golden prime 
When a mightier resurrection 

Shall burst on the doubts of Time ; 
And the thoughts of all i 

Like the waves of the fretful main, 
At the base of the Rock 

Shall foam and fume in \ 

Her, | The Spectator). 

Shall I be left forgotten in the dust 

When fate relenting lets the tlower rev 

No! heaven's immortal 

And man's majestic beau* 

Bright through the etern aphant r« 

.'• 

Like herb and flower, like sun and 

To gracious God akin ; 
Still more beloved and nearer far, 

In spite of death and sin, 
And when the flesh shall pass away, 

My summer will W g 



'Twas sown in weakness here, 
'Twill there be raised in 

That which was sown an earth! j 
Shall rise a heavenly tlower. 



A nip* 



• ict Bonar. 



I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last, — far off, — at last lo all, 
And even,- winter change to spring. . . . 
The wish that of the living whole 

No life may fail beyond the grave. 
Derives it not from what we have 
The likest God within the soul ? 

Alfred Tennyson {In Meneriam, Hii.). 

Faith views the tempest pms 
Sees evening shadows quickly : 
And all serene in heaven. 

..im S. T**tom 



EXALTATION 25 1 

There is nae sorrow there, 
There's neither cold nor care : 
The day is aye fair, John, 
In the land o' the leal. 

Lady Carolina O* Nairne. 

There joys unseen by mortal eyes 

Or reason's feeble ray, 
In ever blooming prospect rise, 
Unconscious of decay. 

A nne Steele. - 
How blest the sacred tie that binds 
In union sweet according minds ! . . . 
Nor shall the glowing flame expire 
When droops at length frail nature's fire ; 
For they shall meet in realms above, 
A heaven of joy, because of love. 

Anna L. Barbauld.. 
My soul is full of whispered song, 

My blindness is my sight ; 
The shadows that I feared so long 

Are all alive with light. . . . 
The palace walls I almost see, 

Where dwells my Lord and King : 
O grave, where is thy victory ! 
O death, where is thy sting ! 

The oak strikes deeper as its boughs 

By furious blasts are driven ; 
So life's tempestuous storms the more 

Have fixed my heart in heaven. 
Beyond this vale of tears 

There is a life above, 
Unmeasured by the flight of years ; 

And all that life is love. 

James Montgomery . 

There truth forever shines, and love forever burns. 

Isaac Watts. 
How brave a prospect is a traversed plain 

Where flowers and palms refresh the eye, 
And days well spent like the glad east remain, 
Whose morning glories cannot die. 



Alice Cary:- 



Oh, if no other boon were given 

To keep our hearts from wrong and stam, 
Who would not try to win a heaven 

Where all we love shall live again ! 

My sprightly neighbor gone before 
To that unknown and silent shore, 
Shall we not meet as heretofore 

Some summer morning ? 
When from the cheerful eyes a ray 
Hath struck a bliss upon the day, 
A bliss that will not go away, 

A sweet forewarning. 

Shalt thou not teach me in that calmer home 
The wisdom that I learned so ill in this, — 

The wisdom which is love, till I become 
Thy fit companion in that land of bliss ? 



Henry Vaughan.. 



Thomas Moore. 



Charles Lamb* 



William C. Bryant* 



252 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

If the fair face of violets should perish 
Before another springtime had its birth, 

Could all the costly blooms that florists cherish 
Bring back its April beauty to the earth ? 

And so with souls we love : they pass and leave us 
Time teaches patience at a bitter o 

Yet all the new loves which the years ra 
Fill not the heart-place aching for the lost. 



A MM, 



The shadows of death o'er my path have been sweepi: 

There are those who have loved me debarred from the day; 
The green turf is bright where in peace they are sleep: 

And on wings of remembrance my sou' 
It is shut to the glow of this present exis- 

It hears from the Past a funereal strain ; 
And it eagerly turns to the high-se< 

Where the last blooms of earth will be garnered ag 
Where no mildew the soft damask-rose < nourish, 

Where Grief bears no longer the poisonous sting; 
Where pitiless Death no dark sceptre cai 

Or stain with his blight the luxun.i 

IV Hi -Clark {A Sottf of *f*v). 

I shall join the lost, the loved of earth, and n 
Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the m 

WiUisC •'*)• 

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so b- 

Yet not unmeet it was that one like that > urs, 

So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with tin 

And glance to glance and hand to hand in greeting 

The past with all 

Its silence and its :< 

Its lonely, yearning 
Shall vanish in the moment v. 

EtiMobtth hrl/s. 

Heaven is heavenly knowledge, love, and act: edies 

of life on earth, . . . persons are brought together by birth, by habit, 
:and by natural affection, who yet do not meet intimately, who have 
no real intimacy of mind and heart. Perhaps the homes her 
will be arranged according to deeper athnities than these. Those 
who belong to each other will come together. ... It is the nature of 
Christian love to be able to come down in deeper sympathy with all 
below, as it ascends in fulness of life to loftier attainment above. . . . 
The mysteries of theologies are usually very poor thin mean 

and small matters; but God's mysteries are grand and noble. They 
lift the soul to conceptions of something higher than this world can 
give ; they open the golden gates of the great hereafter ; they give us 
glimpses of the eternal city of God, wherein all the beauty and love 
of this life shall be transfigured into something higher: — 

Upon the frontier of this shadowy land 
We pilgrims of eternal sorrow stand : 
What realm lies forward with it store 



EXALTATION 253, 

Of forests green and deep, 
Of valleys hushed in sleep, 
And lakes most peaceful ? "Tis the land of Evermore. 

Dr. J. F. Clarke (Common Sense in Religion, p. 27)^ 

New born, I bless the waking hour ; 

Once more, with awe, rejoice to be ; 
My conscious soul resumes her power, 

And springs, my guardian God, to thee. . . . 

That deeper shade shall break away, 

That deeper sleep shall leave mine eyes ; 
Thy light shall give eternal day, > 

Thy love the rapture of the skies. 

John H awkesworth.. 

And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams 

Call to the soul when man doth sleep, 
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, 
And into glory peep. 

Henry Vaughaiu 
. . . Beyond 

That belt of darkness still the years roll on 

More gently, but with not less mighty sweep. 

They gather up again and softly bear • 

All the sweet lives that late were overwhelmed 

And lost to sight, — all that in them was good, 

Nobie, and truly great and worthy of love, — 

The lives of infants and ingenuous youths, 

Sages ancisaintly women, who have made 

Their households happy, — all are raised and borne 

By that great current in its onward sweep, 

Wandering and rippling with caressing waves 

Around green islands, fragrant with the breath 

Of flowers that never wither. So they pass 

From stage to stage along the shining course 

Of that fair river broadening like a sea. • 

As its smooth eddies curl along their way, 

They bring old friends together ; hands are clasped 

In joy unspeakable; the mother's arms 

Again are folded round the child she loved 

And lost. Old sorrows are forgotten now, 

Or but remembered to make sweet the hour 

That overpays them; wounded hearts that bled 

Or broke are healed forever. In the room 

Of this grief-shadowed Present there shall be 

A Present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw 

The heart, and never shall a tender tie 

Be broken, — in whose reign the eternal change 

That waits on growth and action shall proceed 

With everlasting concord hand in hand. 

William C. Bryant ( The Flood of Years\ 

Here may thy storm-beat vessel safely ride; 
This is the port of rest from troublous toil, 
The world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil. 

Edmund Spenser* 

And there in Abraham's bosom — whatever it be which that 
bosom signifies — lives my sweet friend. For what other place is 
there for such a soul ? — St. Augustine. 



254 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Finally, one who, after such a halo-cloud of witnesses, can lay 
no claim to be seer or psalmist, would fain add some testimony 
of his own, albeit a tiny mite, — a thought or two penned a 
quarter of a century ago in the album of a friend, in response 
to her challenge for " a chain of rhyme " upon the theme. 
-" Labor for the meat which abideth unto eternal life." 

Time still, as he flies, brings increase to her truth, 
And gives to her mind what he steals from her youth. 

Edit 
Adieu! Adieu! 'twere hard to part, 

If parting were forever, 
Nor whispered true the I irt, 

" 'Tis but for time v. 
Nor a gentle voice once heard on earth 

Had charmed the soul to chei 
The pleasures choice of heavenly birth 
Which never, never per: 

Roam as we may to find deli. 

Amid the bowers of 
Or work by day and watch by 

Aathe sceptre-beck of I> 
The soul will turn from riches reft 

In passing Death's dire portal, 
And fondliest yearn for some sweets left 

Enlinked with the fanOMM 

In starlit space we proudly pause 

The rapt and rev< 
And subtly trace the m\ 

That guide each circling 
But when we seem 1 

To have searched and know rnal, 

'Tis but a gleam of the golden light 

That glads the po\\ 

The dulcet symphonies « 

In grove and grot resound 
The brooklet's hymn, t! ar, 

Sweet echo's voices bourn'. 
The melody of human u 

All harmonies terre- 
Are but the prelude of : 

Of choristers celestial. 

The fain- form that rlits in crace 

Through festive hall resplendent, 
The witching charm of worn.. 

With rose-tint wreath transci nd 
Age shall transmute, the 

And dimmed the bright 
As the fabled fruit of the D ire 

In the pilgrim's grasp is as 

But the sunny cheer of Virtue c 

That shines through the spirit-kt 
Though time besere'and blanch the choc 

Shall lovelier glow and deeper ; 
Aye, the mind may woo and the heart ma; 

An Eden fading never. 
For the High, the True, the Beautiful, 

Are wed to the soul forever. B F B 



Chapter XLV. 



INTELLECTION, EMOTION, VOLITION. 

Supplementary to the Teachings of Socrates, Plato, Christ, and 
Paul, what are the Four Principal Philosophical Theories 
of the Minors Knowledge of God ? 

(i) The Greek (" Aristotelian " or " Kantian "), (2) the German 
(or " Schellingian "), (3) the French (or " Cousinian "), and (4) 
the Scottish (or " Hamiltonian "). 

It has been observed* that "man is a microcosm, . . . the 
image of God," also f that the mental phenomena have been 
classified (by Stewart, Reid, etc.) under "the Intellect, the Sen- 
sibilities, and the Will." It may be useful in conclusion hereon 
briefly to append an historical summarization. 

Aristotle (born B.C. 384) identifies the human with the divine 
mind, designating one as the absolute Form or Idea, the active 
Reason, or " Self-knowledge of Reason," and the other as the 
passive Reason. In deducing the objective elements in human 
knowledge, he arranged the 7natter of our thoughts in ten 
categories ; namely, Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relation, 
Action, Passion, Place, Time, Posture, Habit. 

Immanuel Kant (b. 1724), deducing the subjective elements, 
arranged the forms of our thoughts in three great faculties : 
(1) the Sensational perception, which gives the matter of our 
notions ; (2) the Understanding, which gives the form ; and 
(3) the pure Reason, which brings unity and connection to the 
whole exercise of the Understanding. His categories of Sensa- 
tion are two, (1) Time and (2) Space: everything perceived 
must have a when and a where. His general categories of the 
Understanding are four, under each of which he has four sub- 
categories : under (1) Quantity, we have Unity, Plurality, and 
Totality; under (2) Quality, we have Affirmation, Negation, 
and Limitation : under (3) Relation, we have Substance, Cau- 
sality, and Reciprocity ; and under (4) Modality, we have Possi- 

* Ante, chap. xl. t Chap. xix. 



256 RECORDS OF JESL'S REVIEWED 

bility, Actuality, and Necessity. The pure Reason, according 
as it is directed to substance, or to phenomena, or to the ideal 
of perfection, leads to the three irreducible ideas of (1) the 
Soul (the absolute subject), (2) the Universe (the totality of all 
phenomena), and (3) of God (the all-perfect essence 

Victor Cousin [Koozan] (b. 1792) would reduce all our 
thoughts to the two primitive ideas of (1) Action and (2 
the one giving the category of causality, the other of sub- 
stance; the one implying the relative, the contingent, the par- 
ticular, the phenomenal; the other implying the absolute, the 
necessary, the universal, the infinite. His third general cate- 
gory is the relation between the two former, or rather between 
their sub-categories, namely: Unity, Multiplicity olute 

Space, Bounded Space; Absolute Existence, Dependent Exist- 
ence; Eternity, Time; Infinite, Finite: Primary Cause, Sec- 
ondary Cause; Substance, Phenomena: Mind, Thoughts; 
Beau-Ideal, Beau-Real; The Perfect, The Imperfect; Con- 
traction, Expansion; Subject, Object. 

Rene Descartes (b. 1596), having taken for the fundamental 
principle of his philosophy the fact that con being is 

postulated in thinking (/'cogito. ergo sum"), John G. Fichte 
(b. 1762) developed a system based on tw i) an 

absolute Affirmation: The M the Me, wherein the mind 

views itself as the absolute subject; and (2) an absolute N 
tion : The Not-me is not the same as the Me, win-rein the mind 
views itself as object. Fichte died without completely deducing 
the absolute unity of thought and 1 1 attained in the 

infinite Being, leaving this doctrine of identity to be developed 
by his pupil, W. J. Schelling (b. 1 down three 

movements, or " Potencies r : ( 1 > of Reflection, or the attempt 
of the Infinite to represent itself in the Fin of Subsump- 

tion, or the attempt the absolute makes, having embodi 
in the Finite, to return to the Infin: 

("Potenz der Vernunft'*), the union or indifference point of the 
two former, wherein the expansive and attractive, the subjective 
and objective movements are blended. 

George W. F. Hegel (b. 1770) considered God to be the 
universal personality, which realizes itself in every human con- 
sciousness as so many separate thoughts of one eternal mind. 
God, therefore, is, in "Hegel's philosophy, the whole process of 
thought, combining in itself the objective movement as seen 
in nature with the subjective as seen in nd fullv realizing 

itself only in the universal spirit of humanity. He made pure 
self-existence answer to the Father, the objectifying of this 



INTELLECTION, EMOTION, VOLITION 257 

pure existence answer to the Logos prophorikos, the Son, and 
the complete reunion of the two in the Church to answer to the 
Spirit. Indeed, his whole system is a more or less fanciful 
arrangement of threes. 

Hegel's general division is : (i) Logic, (2) Philosophy of 
Nature, and (3) Philosophy of Mind. Logic embraces (1) Be- 
ing, or Thought in its immediacy; (2) Essence, or Thought in 
its communication ; and (3) Notion, or Thought in its regress, 
in which it forms a complete idea in itself. 

Hegel considers Being under three categories: (1) Quality, 
having three sub-categories, — Being [" Seyn "], Existence 
["Daseyn"], Independent existence [" Fiir-sich-seyn "] ; (2) 
Quantity, having three sub-categories, — Pure Quantity, Divisi- 
ble Quantity, and Degree; and (3) Measure (or Mass), the union 
of quality and quantity. He considers Essence under three 
categories: (1) Ground of Existence, embracing Pure notions 
of essence, Essential existence, and Thing; (2) Phenomenon, 
embracing Phenomenal world, Matter [" Inhalt "] and Form 
and Relation [" Verhaltniss "] ; and (3) Reality, or Union of 
the two, embracing Relation of Substance, Relation of Cause 
and Action and Reaction. He considers Notion under three 
categories: (1) Subjective Notion, embracing Notion as such 
[" Begrift "], Judgment [" Urtheil "], and Inference [" Schluss "] ; 

(2) Object, embracing Mechanical powers, chemical powers, 
and Design [" Teleologie "] ; (3) Idea, embracing Life, Intelli- 
gence [" Erkennen "], and absolute Idea. 

Hegel's second general division, Philosophy of Nature, 
comprehends three categories : (1) Mechanics, (2) Physics, and 

(3) Organism, each embracing three sub-categories. His third 
general division, Philosophy of Mind, comprehends three cate- 
gories: (1) Mind viewed subjectively, under three sub-catego- 
ries, Anthropology, Psychology, and Will: (2) Mind viewed 
objectively under Jurisprudence, Morals, and Politics ; and 
(3) Absolute Mind, under three sub-categories, ^Esthetics, 
Religion, Philosophy. 

Thus, it will be seen that Hegel's method — the " genetic " 
he terms it — is the developing method, termed by Plato, in 
the sixth book of the Republic, the " dialectic." As Prof. 
W. T. Harris remarked in his Concord lecture, July 27, 1881 : 
" The genetic method differs from the inductive in the fact 
that it recognizes universal and necessary principles as the 
basis of empirical experience and of the phenomena of obser- 
vation. Ordinary induction professes to arrive at general re- 
sults which are not seen as necessary and universal, but only 



258 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

as * invariable experience.' The genetic method differs from 
the deductive method in the fact that it deals with the world 
of experience, — the world of man and the world of nattu 
and seeks to find in the objects which it investigates the 
mate rational principles which are presupposed. " 

Sir William Hamilton has reduced the philosophical hypothe- 
ses, which have obtained respecting our knowledge of the abso- 
lute or unconditioned, to four distinct heads: — 

(1) The Absolute is altogether inconceivable, every notion we 
have of it being simply a negation of that which characterizes 
finite and conditioned existence. This opinion Hamilton him- 
self holds in common with the English and Scottish schools of 
modern times. 

(2) The Absolute, though not an object of real kn a 
yet exists subjectively within o:> 

principle. Thus. Kant believed that pure Reason ne 
gives rise to the notion of the infinite and unconditioned, whicn 
notion we view under the threefold type of t! . the uni- 

verse, and the Deity ; but he did not admit the objective reality 
of these conceptions. He regarded them m 1 personi- 

fications of our own subjective laws or pre 

(3) The Absolute cannot be 
and reflection; but it can 

that of intellectual intuition. Th : 

(4) The Absolute can be grasped b. 
within the compass of out 

theory of Cousin. 

Concerning these four theori< ottish, or Hamilton- 

ian, the Aristotelian, or Kantian, the . :\ the Frenc 

Mr. J. D. Morell says : — 

We cannot divest our minds of the belief that there is something 
positive in the glance which the human soul casts upon the world of 
eternity and infinity. Whether we rise to the contemplation of the 
Absolute through the medium of the true, the beautiful, or the good, 
we cannot imagine that our highest concept these terminate in 

darkness, in a total negation^of all knowledge. So far from this, 
there seem to be flashes of light, ineffable it may be, but still real, 
which envelop the soul in a lustre all divine, when it catches gli: 
of infinite truth, infinite beauty, and infinite excellence. The mind, 
instead of plunging into a total eclipse of all intellection, when it 
rises to this elevation, seems rather to be dazzled by a too great efful- 
gence; yet still the light is real light, although to any but the 
vision the effect may be to blind rather than to illume. It is not by 
negations that men are governed, but it is before the idea of eternity 
and infinity that our fiercest humanity is softened and subdued.— 



INTELLECTION, EMOTION, VOLITION 259 

Historical and Critical View of Speculative Philosophy in Europe, 
Nineteenth Century, p. 656. 

And here, very pertinently and instructively, may be ap- 
pended a brief, if not less abstruse, comparison of the more 
ancient beliefs upon the relation of God to the human soul, 
particularly Hindu, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Hebrew : — 

The most spiritual portiou of the Hindu sacred books teach the 
existence of one invisible God whom they call Brahm. They make 
no images of him, and build no temples for his worship. His name 
is never uttered by a pious Hindu. None of their traditions repre- 
sent him as incarnated in any form, because they believe him to be 
utterly above human comprehension, and altogether incapable of the 
slightest change in his existence. Nature is the inferior passive por- 
tion of him. All things emanate from him ; all is he, and all returns 
to him. His action upon nature and upon human souls is through a 
variety of spirits, presiding over the planets, the elements, and all the 
forces of nature. All in the scale of being are emanations from him 
in successive gradations. The highest of these emanations are 
Brahma, the Creator, Vishnu, the Preserver, and Siva, the Destroyer, 
who is likewise the reproducer of forms. . . . Genesa, god of wisdom, 
is greatly revered. They never commence any important business 
without offering him flowers or sprinkling his image with oil. — 
JL. Maria Child {Progress of Religious Ideas, L, p. 10). 

Every ancient nation of which any historical records remain be- 
lieved in one Invisible Being, the Centre and Source of all things. 
Orientals conceived of him as inactive, serenely contemplating the 
glory of his own essence, radiating from himself all the vitality of 
the universe by inherent necessity, not by any exercise of his will, 
having no superintendence over creation, no interest in the affairs 
of men. These views perhaps originated partly in the prevailing 
Asiatic notions that anything like activity or labor was degrading to 
the character of a monarch. But a much stronger influence doubt- 
less proceeded from the general idea that evil was inherent in matter. 
The human soul was unwilling to admit that the Supreme Being could 
be in any way connected with evil. Perceiving the material world to 
be full of apparent evils, men inferred that it could not have been 
produced by the one pure essence. Consequently, they imagined that 
a great Spirit or Power emanated from the Eternal One, and by the 
agency of this second god worlds were created. Hindus named this 
first emanation Brahma ; Egyptians, Amun ; Persians, Ormuzd ; all 
regarded him as the Creator. 

The religion of the Hebrews differed from other prior and contem- 
porary systems in representing the One Source of Being as himself 
the Creator and Sustainer of all things, by his own direct agency and 
the active exertion of his will. But in later times, after their cap- 
tivity in Babylon and their settlement in Alexandria, when Oriental, 
Egyptian, and Grecian theories became mixed with the written doc- 



260 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

trines ascribed to Moses, they also taught that God created the world 
by the agency of a second power whom their writers called " the First 
Adam," "the Lord of heaven," "the Wisdom of God," "the V 
of God," "the first begotten Son of God," "the Esteemed the Same 
as God." . . . 

Man seems to have made God after his own image. Hindus in- 
vested Brahm with their own love of contemplation and repose. 
The Chinese Chang-ti was exactly according to their pattern of a 
wise and beneficent emperor. The Jehovah of the Hebrews was 
jealous of his own pre-eminence, great in slaughter of Philistines,, 
stern but placable to his chosen people. The Greeks, lively and 
intellectual, conceived of Deity as an active, enterprising, intriguing, 
and amorous being. Philosophers thought of him as the mind of the 
universe. Socrates and Plato rose to the idea of ersal 

Father. ... It seems likely that the title 1 and the Devil 

[D'Evil] applied to the great contending 1 

the universe, originated in the old Persian ideas concerning Ormuzd, 
the Prince of Good, and Arimanes of Evil. 

There was universally a sacred and mystical number representing 
Deity in his completeness. One of the most ancient sy 
Hindustan and Egypt was a triangle with an eye in the centre, to 
represent the All-seeing. Hindus represented their three great gods 
in one image. Egyptian deities were usually in triads. Pl.r 
a Trinity of divine attributes, Goodm 

Life. Cabalists appear to have expressed the same ideas in IK 
style, when they wrote of Jehovah, the ., and the 

Habitation of Jehovah. Hindus, i 

ists, supposing man to be an im I rod, all represented him 

triune being consisting of a rational soul and a material body. In all 
countries, philosophers and mystics e.\ more or _;uely 

that the Deity was one in three. 

It was a very prevalent theory, conspicuous in various reli^ 
that the ideas pre-existing in De'ity took form by the utterance 
word. In Persian and Hebrew sacred books, it .red that God 

spoke, and light sprang into existence, foil 
the other objects of creation. Persians called this word I 
invoked him as the great Primal Spirit. Heb: led the w 

Memra, and regarded him as a representative of [eh 
of man. With Hindus, the creative Wbl 
They believed it included within itself all the qua 
and reverenced it next to him. The general idea evid, 
the Word existed with God from all eternity, and • n be- 

came a glorious form, the aggregate embodiment of all tfc 
ideas, including them all within itself, and I develop 

becoming God's great agent in the work of creai 

Hindus, Persians, Hebrews, Greeks, all believed in I 
pany of spirits, who mediated between man and the highc 
They carried up the prayers of mortals and brought 
in return. Generally, some one spirit was suppc 



INTELLECTION, EMOTION, VOLITION 26l 

in the kindly offices of intercession and propitiation. Persians named 
Mithras "the Mediator." Cabalists called the angel Metraton the 
mediator between God and man. They said he led the children of 
Israel through the wilderness and gave the law to Moses. Platonized 
Jews in Alexandria described the Logos or Word the " Mediatoi and 
Intercessor between God and man." They supposed he appeared 
under various angelic forms to the patriarchs, that he dictated to 
Moses, and inspired the prophets ; for it had become a universal idea 
that no man had seen God at any time. 

The same tendencies which made men try to bring the Creator 
nearer to them, by the intervention of intermediate agents, naturally 
led them to worship the mediums in preference to the higher Deity, 
whom they represented and served. Thus, Brahma gave place to 
Vishnu in various forms ; Osiris eclipsed Amun ; Mithras superseded 
Orrnuzd; and Apollo received much more worship than Jupiter. . . . 

In most nations, a belief prevailed that the return of the Golden 
Age would be brought about by the advent of a just and holy man, 
through whose agency all discords, moral and physical, would be 
harmonized, and the world restored to order. Hindus believed such 
a personage would appear, and bring all nations under guidance of 
the Brahmins. Chinese expected a holy one would appear on their 
sacred mountain, and bring all the world into subjection to the 
Chinese empire. Persians believed such awaiting comer would con- 
cert the whole world to the religion of Zoroaster. The Hebrews had 
the strongest assurance that a Prince and Deliverer would come in the 
royal line of King David, who would exterminate all nations and 
individuals, except those who adopted the Jewish religion. . . . 

Hindus, Persians, Greeks, and Jews, all supposed sinners would be 
subjected to purification by fire. Persians believed that all spirits, 
even the Devil himself, would finally do homage to goodness, and 
thus become happy. Jews supposed the wicked of their own nation 
would be tormented with fire hereafter, but merely for purposes of 
purification. At the end of the world, they would be summoned to 
rise from the dead, and share in the bliss of the Messiah's kingdom. 
They supposed that other nations would have no resurrection. . . . 

At a very early period, the ascribing of evil to the imperfection of 
matter introduced civil war into the house of life, by teaching men 
to regard the body as an enemy to the soul. Passions and instincts 
given for usefulness and enjoyment were considered spiritual snares. 
A healthy body and a good appetite were hindrances in the way of 
holiness ; and to feel sexual attraction was yielding to the instigation 
of the Devil. In order to become angels, men tormented their poor 
material forms. They reduced themselves to skeletons by midnight 
watchings and prolonged fasts ; they scourged themselves till the 
blood flowed ; they tore their flesh with hooks and burned it with fire. 
They spent their wealth in sacrifices and their time in prayers, to 
atone for the sin of having any bodily wants. From this horror of 
natural instincts arose the traditions of various nations that their 
holy teachers were born of virgins, this being necessary to disconnect 
them with the alleged impurity of human passions. . . . 



262 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

The idea of one representative of evil, named Satan, did not appear 
in Jewish writings tiJ after their residence in Babylon. A h< 
inferior evil spirits swarmed in all religions, and were everywhere 
supposed to produce diseases by taking possession of human bodies. 
Sudden and violent attacks of illness, such as insanity or fits, were 
peculiarly attributed to their agency. It was the general belief that 
they could be expelled by invoking a good spirit or uttering a huly 
name. In all the ancient nations, people were in the constant habit 
of resorting to priests and sanctified men to cast out demons by 
reciting sacred words. And they nearly all had traditions concerning 
spirits who rebelled against the highest Deity, were expelled from 
paradise, and kept chained in lower r 

One feature common t :> ancient nations was to deem unpremedi- 
tated speech prophetic, especially so the exclamations of i: 
people. It was a common thing to excite prophetic frc iusic. 

The Grecian Pythoness, before she uttered , inhaled a kind of 

vapor which put her into a nervous and bewil 

records tell of men who prophesied in trances; wl read the 

interior thoughts of others; whose - t their 1> 

for a while, and at such times could give inforn 
most distant places. Of the oracles of th- . Heraelitus * 

500) said, "Their unadorned, cru I oired 

mouth, reached through a thousand ... 

The Hindu Puranas declare that a crocodile swallow -hna, 

and cast him forth unhurt. They also tell used 

with Menu, as the Hebrew I cut tha: 

Eve. ... In the childhood of the world, men und< ittle and 

believed much. If a hail-storm d rews 

said Jehovah "cast down great stones from h lb* x., II.) 

If a man died from exposure to the sun, Greeks 
Apollo had shot him with his golden arrow, in punishno 
offence. When any person was struck dead b) lightn. 
vians believed that Thor, God of Thun him, and 

had hurled his hammer at his head. . . . Had those men of the olden 
time witnessed the process of taking a daguerreotvpe or photograph, 
they would have believed that it was actuallv rit of 

the Sun, and that he had illuminated the minds of men, so that -they 
understood how to prepare the plate and concentrate the rays. ... [n 
order that inspiration from superior | might tl their 

minds, undisturbed by outward obstructions, thev retired to the soli- 
tude of a cave, as Numa did, or drew nearer to the Divine Presence. 
as they supposed, by ascending to the summit of mountains, as did 
Zoroaster and Moses. . . . Ourselves environed by wonders which in- 
tellect is helpless to explain, which science ca verv few- 
steps back toward the Primal Cause, can we marvel that men in the 
childhood of the world verilv believed all things miraculou- 
we in reality know much better than thev did w . We 
must away with paintings and poetrv, or we are all idola: 

Sir James Forbes, in his O Brahmin 



INTELLECTION, EMOTION, VOLITION 263 

who divined what an English lady, resident in India, was thinking of 
her son, whom she had left in his native land. He told her what the 
young man was doing, and predicted what he would do ; and, though 
it was quite different from her own anticipations, it proved as he had 
said. It is recorded of Egyptian priests that they cured the diseased 
by passing their hands over them. Balaam is said to have prophe- 
sied " in a trance, having his eyes open." Hyrcanus, the Jewish 
prince and high priest, told of a distant victory gained by his son 
at the very moment that it occurred. Magicians and wizards were 
accused of travelling through the air, of being in two places at once, 
of telling the past, and reading the thoughts of others. The soul of 
Hermotimus, the Greek philosopher, frequently left his body appar- 
ently lifeless, and wandered all over the earth, bringing tidings from 
remote regions and foretelling futurity. The priestess of the Delphic 
oracle perceived that Croesus was boiling flesh in a covered brass 
vessel, though the secret was known only to himself, and he was hun- 
dreds of miles distant. That these phenomena were noticed by the 
ancients seems to be indicated by their general theory that man was 
endowed with an intermediate substance between his rational soul 
and his body. They sometimes called it an aerial body and some- 
times a sensuous soul ; and they described it as having all of sensa- 
tion in each and every part of it, as " all eye, all ear, and all taste." 
— L. Maria Child {Progress of Religious Ideas , II., 176). 

Thus, well illustrated and demonstrated by Mrs. Child, appro- 
priately may the text of Mrs. Cross, prefacing the beginning of 
our review, — 

We had not walked 
But for Tradition. We walk evermore 
To higher paths, by brightening Reason's lamp,— 

become 



The End. 



I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and 
nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.— 

Michael de Montaigne. 



APPENDIX. 



Page 17. 

We are eclectics in accepting the teaching of Scripture. We dis- 
tinguish between its lower and its higher thought; between its teach- 
ings which are worthy of all acceptation and those which the rational 
mind is compelled to reject as unworthy and false. We endeavor to 
separate the chaff from the wheat, and garner carefully the treasure 
that remains. We rind in the Bible sayings of the sublimest wisdom 
and of the highest and purest truth; and often, in juxtaposition with 
these, we have the utterances of human passion, hate, vindictiveness, 
partiality, and injustice, which it is impossible to accept as of divine 
warrant or authority. We find deeds recorded, said to be committed 
some at the express command of God, others with his sanction, which 
no ingenuity of defence can save from utter condemnation. It is pre- 
posterous to say we must accept the whole as of the same character 
and quality. That would be for our minds to abdicate the function 
of rational judgment. It would be to silence the divine voice within 
us, to extinguish the light of the inner eye, and grope in wilful blind- 
ness. — Charles F. Beard {London Inquirer), 

You will never convince a man of ordinary sense by overbearing 
his understanding. — Samuel Maunder. 

Page 19. 

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can 
see nothing but sea. . . . He that will believe only what he can fully 
comprehend must have a very long head or a very short creed. . . . 
Because it is silly to believe everything, there are some so wondrous 
wise as to believe nothing. — Samuel Maunder. 

Page 76. 

When fortune comes smiling, she often designs the most mischief. 
. . . When fortune caresses a man too much, she is apt to make a fool 
of him. — Samuel Maunder. 

Fear ills, though not yet felt : when fortune smiles, 
Be doubly cautious, lest destruction come. 

Sophocles {Philoctetes). 



Page %%. 



He still remembered that he once was young, 
His easy presence checked no decent joy. 

John A rmstrong. < 



266 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

It has been questioned whether there be recorded any in- 
stance of a sally of humorous pleasantry on the part of Jesus 
or Paul. It seems hardly safe to predicate much upon the 
meagre statement in Luke xiii., 32, as to the reply to the Phari- 
sees, calling Antipas a fox. Paul's playful appeal to Philemon's 
magnanimity (Phil. 19) has been adduced as a model of nice 
humor. See The Bible for Learners, vol. iii., p. 638. 

Page 89. 

The most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clear- 
est discoveries of virtue or vice in men. Sometimes, a matter of less 
moment, an expression or a jest, inforn t their chara 

and inclinations than the most fam< maments, 

or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. — Plutarch. 

Page 90. 

But midst the crowd, the hum, the shod. 

To hear, to see, to feel, and b 

And roam along, the world's tired 

With none to bless us, none whom 

Minions of splendor shri 

None that with kindred 1 

If we were not, would seem to smile the 

Of all that nattered, foil. 

This is to be alone; this, this is 

. 

But if there be "none to bless us, none wl 
we may generally charge the misfortune to 
life. Poor Byron! Alas : few can assume to Ik m a 

preachment upon his deferring, until s the Miss 

scene, to ask himself : — 

Wouldst thou from sorrow find a sweet relief I 
Rouse to some work of high and 1 
And thou an angel's ha 

Page 91. 

The greatest of all faults is to believe we have none. . . . We never 
yet knew a man disposed to scorn the humbl self a 

fair object of scorn to the humblest — 6 

Page 119. 

The first step to virtue is to love virtue in another.— Samuet 
Maunder. 

Page 133. 

Remember me, I pray, hut not 

In Flora's gay and bloom i: e 
When every brake hath found 

And sunshine smiles in 
But when the falling leaf is » 

And withers sadly from the b 
And o'er the ruins of the 

Cold autumn weeps, remember me. 



APPENDIX 267 

. . . Inward turn 

Each thought and every sense, 
For sorrow lingers from without, 

Thou canst not charm it thence, 
But all attuned the soul may be 
Unto a deathless melody. Elizabeth O. Smith. - 

Page 134. 

Sophocles being asked what harm he would wish to his 
enemy, answered, " That he may love where he is not fancied." 

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, 
but hides us from ourselves. — Samuel Maunder. 

Page 136. 

If woman lost us Eden, such as she alone restores it. — John G. 
Whittier, 

Women are a new race, recreated since the world received Chris- 
tianity. — He7iry W. Beecher. 

There is a woman at the beginning of all great things. — Alphonse 
de Lamartine, 

Woman is the Sunday of man ; not his repose only, but his joy, the 
salt of his life. — Jules Michelet. 

A beautiful woman is a practical poet; taming her savage mate, 
planting tenderness, hope, and eloquence in all whom she approaches. 
— Ralph W. Emerson. 

Misfortune sprinkles ashes on the head of the man, but falls like 
dew on the head of the woman, and brings forth germs of strength of 
which she herself had no conscious possession. — Anna C. Mawatt. 

True liberty has no enemy so formidable as licentiousness. . . . The 
licentious never love. . . . They that marry where they do not love are 
likely to love where they do not marry. . . . He who triumphs over 
a woman would over a man — if he durst ; hence, he is both fool 
and coward. ..." Throw not a stone into the well from which thou 
drinkest." — Samuel Maunder. 

Page 137. 

Despise trifling affronts, and they will vanish. A little water will 
put out a fire, which' blown up would burn a city. — Samuel Maunder, 

Page 138. 

Make method your slave, but be not a slave to method. . . . Hasty 
conclusions are the mark of a fool. . . . Precipitation is the ruin of 
the young; delay, the ruin of the old. . . . The young are slaves to 
novelty ; the old to custom. — Samuel Maunder, 

I am not old, . . . 
For in my heart a fountain flows, 
And round it pleasant thoughts repose, 
And sympathies and feelings high 
Spring like the stars on evening sky. Park Benjamin-.- 



;268 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Half of the ills we hoard within our hearts 
Are ills because we hoard them. 

Bryan W. Proctor (Mirandola), 

Page 140. 

Every Homer has his Zoilus; and every Zoilus is remembered only 

i:o be despised. — Samuel Maunder* 

Page 141. 

As the baggage is to the army, so is riches to virtue : it cannot 
well be spared nor left behind, but it hinders the march. — Samuel 
Maunder. 

Page 142. 

Dive not too deep in pleasure ; for there i> ■ >ediment at the 
bottom that renders it noxious and impure. — *S tdir. 

Nor need we power or splendor, 

Wide hall or lordly dome : 
The good, the true, the tender. — 

These form the wealth of home. 

Sarah J. H,iU. 



Page 147. 



Page 157. 



Page 161. 



Let all that now divides us remove and pass away, 
Like shadows of the morning before the blaze o( dl 
Let all that now unites us more sweet and 
A closer bond of union in a blest land of love. 



For those who shun the glare of 

There's a composing no* 
That meets them on their lonely way, 
In the still air, the sober r. 

Of this religious hour. 



The harp at Nature's advent strung 

Has never ceased to pla 
The song the stars of morning sung 

Has never died away. 

The blue sky is the temple's arch ; 

Its transept, earth and air: 
The music of its starry march, 

The chorus of a pra 

So Nature keeps the reverent frame 

With which her yea 
And all her signs and voices shame 

The prayerless heart of man. 






John PUrfiont. 



-D John G. Whittur. 

Page 171. 

The healing of his seamless di 

Is by our beds of pain ; 
We touch him in life's throng and | 1 

And we are whole again. 



APPENDIX 269 

Page 172. 

It will be pertinent and instructive to compare two or three 
cases of death-bed transfiguration, where there was no ade- 
quate physiological solution ; not cases, which are very com- 
mon, presenting symptoms of cerebral derangement, where 
some definite object, form, or face appears to be seen. The 
first, narrated by Frances P. Cobbe, is the case of u a refined r 
highly educated boy," fourteen years old : — 

He was sitting propped up in bed, and had been looking rather 
sadly at the bright sunshine playing on the trees outside his open 
window for some time. He had turned away from this scene how- 
ever, and was facing the end of the room, where there was nothing 
whatever but a closed door, when all in a moment the whole expres- 
sion of his face changed to one of the most wondering rapture, 
which made his half-closed eyes open to their utmost extent, while 
his lips parted with a smile of perfect ecstasy- It was impossible to 
doubt that some glorious sight was visible to him ; and, from the 
movement of his eyes, it was plain that it was not one, but many 
objects on which he gazed ; for his look passed slowly away from end 
to end of what seemed to be vacant wall before him, going back and 
forward, with ever-increasing delight manifested in his whole aspect. 
His mother then asked him, if what he saw was some wonderful sight 
beyond the confines of this world, to give her a token that it was so 
by pressing her hand. He at once took her hand and pressed it 
meaningly, giving thereby an intelligent affirmative to her question, 
though unable to speak. As he did so, a change passed over his face, 
his eves closed, and in a few minutes he was gone ! — The Peak hi 
Darien {The Riddle of Death), p. 257. 

The second case is that of a lady of middle age : — 

Her death, though momentarily expected from cardiac disease, 
was not announced or preceded by the usual anaesthesia of the 
dying. During the night, when awake, her mental action was per- 
fect. She conversed a few minutes before dying, as pleasantly and 
intelligently as ever. There was no stupor, delirium, straiigeness, or 
moribtDid symptom indicating cerebral disturbance. Her cardiac symp- 
toms alone foreshadowed the great change. After saying a few 
words, she turned her head upon her pillow as if to sleep, then, un- 
expectedly turning it back, a glow, brilliant and beautiful exceed- 
ingly, came into her features ; her eyes, opening, sparkled with sin- 
gular vivacity ; at the same moment,' with a tone of emphatic sur- 
prise and delight, she pronounced the name of the earthly being 
nearest and dearest to her ; and then propping her head upon her 
pillow, as unexpectedly as she had looked up, her spirit departed 
to God who gave it. The conviction forced upon my mind, that 
something departed from hei body at that instant rupturing the 
bonds of flesh, was stronger than language can express. — Dr. Ed- 
ward H. Clarke, Visions: A Study of False Sight {Pseudopij), p. 277. 



:2J0 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

A case occurring at North Danville, Vt, in July, 1838, and 
published in the North Star, Danville, was that of John P. 
Weeks, who, after lying several minutes without breath or 
pulsation, opened his eyes, and with glowing features averred 
that he had been in the other world, hac> viewed a lovely land- 
scape of grass and flowers, and had been told that he must 
return to earth and spend more years in religious activity. To 
the surprise of his physician and friends, he forthwith recov- 
ered. He died in 1882. 

In cases where the departing person seemed to gaze with 
interest and delight, and a transfigured countenance, upon 
something, — whether some strange beauty, as of a radiant 
glory, or an angelic group, or sainted friends, no one present 
could tell, and there was no revealin^ lence, surprise, 

wonder, and rapt gazing would be natural.. And as the \vr 
last quoted remarks : — 

There would be no revival of brain cells, stamped with earthly 
memories and scenes, but somethin vhich the brain had 

received no antecedent impre ich the Ego had formed 

no conception. . . . His features would be transfigured, and those 
around would be amazed, perhaps appalled, 
fishermen were, two thousand ye 

by the transcendent glory of a familial In Correggi 

the light which illuminates the group around the infant 
ceeds from the face of the Christ-child, who, 1 

-lap, unconsciously baptizes all with hea\ uld, 

and such must be, the ineffable expression of transfigured huma 
upon the features of whoever gets a sight of heaven, before he has 
left the earth. — Visions, etc., p. 27S. 

Page 178. 

He that can look the other world in the face has nothing to fear. — 
Samuel Maunder. 

Page 186. 

He that eyes a providence shall always have a providence to eve.— 
Samuel Maunder. 

I have led 

A life too stirring for those vague L . 
That superstition builds in solitude. 

Page 197. 

A study of some of the phenomena of pseudopia and ps 
dotia will render more clear the ideational theory of the record 
of the resurrection of the body of Jesus. A good illustrate 
case of false seeing, though without false ! :hat of 

Lord Brougham, who, in his autobio^raphv. narrates that 
-England), after conversing with Stuart .with whom he had 



APPENDIX 271 

travelled in Sweden) on immortality, etc., having become 
severely chilled, he took a bath, which being too hot caused a 
congestion of the brain approaching apoplexy : — 

After I left the High School, I went with G., my most intimate 
friend, to attend the classes in the University. There was no divin- 
ity class ; but we frequently in our walks discussed and speculated 
upon ... a future state. This question and the possibility, I will not 
say of ghosts walking, but of the dead appearing to the living, were 
subjects of much speculation ; and we actually committed the folly of 
drawing up an agreement, written with our bloody to the effect that 
whichever of us died the first should appear to the other, and thus 
solve any doubts we had entertained of the "life after death." After 
we had finished our classes at the college, G. went to India, having 
got an appointment there in the civil service. He seldom wrote 
to me, and after the lapse of a few years I had almost forgotten him. 
Moreover, his family having little connection with Edinburgh, I sel- 
dom saw or heard anything of them, or of him through them, so that 
all the old school-boy intimacy had died out, and I had nearly forgot- 
ten his existence. I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath ; and 
while lying in it, and enjoying the comfort of the heat after the late 
freezing I had undergone, I turned my head round, looking toward 
the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get 
up out of the bath. On the chair sat G., looking calmly at me. 
How I got out of the bath I know not ; but, on recovering my senses, 
I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever 
it was, that had taken the likeness of G. had disappeared. The 
vision produced such a shock that I had no inclination to talk about 
it, even to Stuart, but the impression it made upon me was too vivid 
to be easily forgotten ; and so strongly was I affected by it that I 
have here written down the whole history with the date, Decem- 
ber 19. . . . [Sixty vears later.] (E. Brougham, Oct. 16, 1862.) I have 
just been copying from my journal the account of this strange dream: 
certissima ?nortis imago I And now to finish the story begun about 
sixty years since. Soon after my return to Edinburgh, there arrived 
a letter from India announcing G.'s death, and stating that he had 
died on the 19th of December ! — The Life and Letters of Henry Lord 
B rough am, 7vritten by himself New York, 187 1, vol. i., p. 146. 

Whereupon Dr. Edward H. Clarke comments: — 

The cells of young Brougham's brain must have been stamped, 
more deeply than ever before by any other event with the features of 
his friend G.'s face, and with the ideas and hopes and resolutions 
which the compact they had entered into inspired. G. disappeared 
from the orbit of Brougham's life. The brain-cells which had been 
thus stamped, sensitized like a photographic plate, were laid away in 
the recesses of Brougham's brain. There they were deposited, the 
hieroglyphic representations of G.'s face and form and of the com- 
pact and the attendant ideas, like a portrait in a garret, or a manu- 



272 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

script in a drawer, ready to be brought out, whenever anything should 
occur capable of dragging them into the light. ... A moderate 
anaemia of the periphery of the brain, and a moderate hyperaemia of 
the base of the brain, are among the conditions of sleep, and conse- 
quently of dreams which occur only in sleep. The congestion pro- 
duced by the bath naturally intensified these conditions. . . . The 
discussion with Stuart, added to the stimulus of a warm bath, would 
be sufficient to bring within the sphere of automatic activity the 
latent cell groups which were the representatives of G. The groups 
appeared, subjective vision was accomplished, and Lord Brougham saw 
the friend of his youth apparently projected into space before him. 

The connection between the death of G. in India and the vision in 
Brougham's brain is probably only that of coincidence. At any rate, 
physiology has no explanation to offer of such a phenomenon. Those 
who believe that it is more than coincidence mu^t seek for an expla- 
nation by means which science cannot employ, and in a region into 
which physiology cannot enter. And, mon must 

not forget the fact, previously mentioned, that 'the future life is not 
conditioned by time or space; so that, when G. died in India, he was 
as near Brougham in England as if they were in the same room. 
Hence, looking at the vision from the spiritual side, we can conceive 
how G., having no limits of space between him •ugham at the 

moment of death, should at that moment instantly be near him. 
But how G. could communicate with Lord 1 ain a 

matter about which we are utterly ignorant. In r 
know how we communicate with each o: ., the 

tongue moves, and the air vibrates; but how that 

makes an idea pass from one to the other. Still less can we g 
how a disembodied spirit can communicate with flesh and blood. 

One other suggestion may be made. God never employs a new 
method, that is, a supernatural one, when an old method, tha: 
natural one, will accomplish the object he has in view. Me loi 
employ the simplest measures. The same mathematical curve which 
governs the growth of a violet guides t: in their coi 

Following this law, we should expect that G., it he wished to a; 
to Brougham, would not reclothe himself with our miserable habili- 
ments of flesh, but would simply act upon Broughai 
to produce subjective vision. So God no upon th 

brain so as to indicate his presence and becor roe in 

it, without ever assuming a gross anthropomorphic objective form. — 
Visions: A Study of False Sight (/ 

A case both of false sight and false hearing is that of C 
Nicolai, of Berlin, in 1791. His narrative and comments 
evince a thinker in advance of that age : — 

At ten o'clock in the forenoon, my wife and another person came 
to console me. I was in a violent pertuk mind, on 

series of incidents which had altogether wounded mv moral feelings, 



APPENDIX 273 

and from which I saw no possibility of relief, when suddenly I ob- 
served, at the distance of ten paces from me, the figure of a deceased 
person. I pointed at it, and asked my wife whether she did not see 
it. She saw nothing, but, being much alarmed, endeavored to com- 
pose me, and sent for the physician. The figure remained some 
seven or eight minutes, and at length I became a little more calm; 
and, as I was extremely exhausted, I soon fell into a troubled slum- 
ber, which lasted for half an hour. ... In the afternoon, about four 
o'clock, the figure again appeared, when I was alone. I went to the 
apartment of my wife, but thither also the figure pursued me. About 
six o'clock, several stalking figures also appeared; but they had no 
connection with the standing figure. ... I was in general perfectly 
calm and self-collected on the occasion. I knew extremely well, when 
it only appeared to me that the door was opened and a phantom 
entered, ard when the door really was opened and any person came 
in. . . . Sometimes, the phantasms spoke with one another, but for the 
most part they addressed themselves to me : these speeches were in 
general short, and never contained anything disagreeable. . . . 

I was alone with the surgeon, but during the operation [of being 
bled] the room swarmed with human forms of every description, 
which crowded fast one on another. This continued till half-past four 
o'clock, exactly the time when the digestion commences. I then 
observed that the figures began to move more slowly; soon after- 
ward, the colors became gradually paler ; every seven minutes they 
lost more and more of their intensity, without any alteration in the 
distinct figure of the apparitions. At about half-past six o'clock, all 
the figures were entirely white, and moved very little, yet the forms 
appeared perfectly distinct. By degrees, they became visibly less plain, 
without decreasing in number, as had often formerly been the case. 
The figures did not move off, neither did they vanish, which also had 
usually happened on other occasions. In this instance, they dissolved 
immediately into air; of some, even whole pieces remained for a 
length of time, which also by degrees were lost to the eye. At about 
eight o'clock, there did not remain a vestige of any of them, and I 
have never since experienced any appearance of the same kind. — 
A Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, by William 
Nicholson, London, 1803, vol. vi., 166, ff. 

A case of false sight, with only slightly deranged hearing, is 
that of a lady whose account was written out at request of Dr. 
E. H. Clarke: — 

My earliest recollections are of a life made miserable by the daily 
companionship of a crowd of dreadful beings, visible, I know, only 
to myself. Like Madame de Stael, I did not believe in ghosts, but 
feared them mortally. When I was about fifteen, we went to Europe 
for two years ; and the change of scene, and of constant external in- 
terest, broke up my invisible world, and I have only entered it since 
in times of excitement or great fatigue. Of late years, the most dis- 
tinct visions have appeared only when sharp mental pain or anxiety 



274 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

has been added to bodily exhaustion. My sense of hearing has never 
deceived me, except that during my girlhood, in frequent nervous 
states of mind, all sounds would strike my ears discontinuously, that 
is, with a time-beat as sharp and rhythmical as the movement of the 
baton by an orchestral conductor. 

Several years ago, one of my sisters was taken ill with typhoid 
fever. I was not strong enough to be of any assistance in her cham- 
ber, so I undertook to finish some work that she had begun, and 
became daily more and more worn out in my endeavors to carrv it on. 
Anxiety, added to fatigue, finally brought back the old visions, which 
had not troubled me continuously for some vears. Animals of a 1 
kinds, men, women, glaring-eyed giants, passea before or around me 
until I often felt as though I were surrounded by a circle of magic 
lanterns, and would sometimes place the back of my chair against a 
wall, that at least my ghosts should not keep me constantly turning, 
as they passed behind me. One evening, feel: -it up 

for the latest report of my sister, which my mother brought me 
larly, I went to bed, leaving m vide open, so that the 

the adjoining entry sent a stream of light a .-half of my little 

chamber, leaving the rest somewhat in shad iw mv 

mother walk slowly into the room, and stop at the I the bed. 

I remember feeling surprised that I had not heard her f 
came through the passage. "Well?" I 
swer, but she took two or thi 

and stopped again. "What is the matter ill no 

reply; but again she moved slowly i 
frightened by this ominous silence, \ up in 1 

don't you speak to me?" Until then. 

the door; but, as I last spoke, she turned, aim iiing mv 

and the light falling on her face showed me an 
had heavy dark hair; and her face, quit 
calm, very sad. ... As I stared at her 

fell to the floor. I instantly stooped over the side of the l>ed. 
my consternation, there was nothing to 1 

to ghosts, if there had been anything in tl. it mv 

visitor, I should have suspected her tangibilit] I defined 

was she, so vividly was her reality im; i :oon me, thu 

not believe that she had vanished.'. . . — Vmams % etc., p. 26, 

Page 203. 

For many are called, but/. . We are rather to under- 

stand by the chosen those whom God has selected from the number 
of the invited as worthy to share the blessings of his kingdom. But 
these can neither be the earthlv-minded, who" spurned the invitation 
altogether, nor those who wished indeed to have a share in the king- 

i m °* God, but not to practise [literallv, M to actualize in them- 
selves J the righteousness which belongs to it. They are onlv the 
few who by actual possession and practice tualiza: 

Verwirkhchung} of this righteousness have be, nbers 



APPENDIX 



275 



of the kingdom. — Bemhard Weiss {Das Matthausevangelium und seine 
Lucas-Par allele n erklart, Halle, 1876, p. 472). Compare his Biblical 
Theology \ § 30, d, vol. i., p. 137, English translation. 

Page 212. 

Still, near the lake, with weary tread, 

Lingers a form of human kind ; 
And on his lone, unsheltered head 

Flows the chill night-damp of the wind. 
Why seeks he not a home of rest ? 

Why seeks he not a pillowed bed ? 
Beasts have their dens, the bird its nest, 

He hath not where to lav his head. 



" See how he loved " who never shrank 
From toil or danger, pain or death ; 

Who all the cup of sorrow drank, 
And meekly yielded up his breath. 

And learn from self to cease : 
Leave all things to our Father's will ; 
And, on his mercy leaning still, 

Find in each trial peace. 

Bonds and stripes, and evil story, 

Are our honorable crowns ; 
Pain is peace and shame is glory, 

Gloomy dungeons are as thrones. 

Think what spirit dwells within thee ; 

Think what Father's smiles are thine; 
Think what Jesus did to win thee. 

Child of heaven, canst thou repine? 



William. Russell. 



Sarah Bache. 



Joseph A nstice. 



Liidzuig A. Goiter. 



Henry F. Lyte. 



Pag. 



And, oh, if thoughts of gloom 

Should hover o'er the tomb, 
That light of love our guiding star shall be : 

Our spirits shall not dread 

The shadowy way to tread, 
Friend, Guardian, Saviour, which doth lead to thee. 

Sarah E. Miles. 

;e2i5. 
A warm heart requires a cool head. . . . Think like the wise, but 
talk like ordinary people. . . . Trust not the man who promises with 
an oath. . . . Never expect excellence from a vain-glorious boaster. 
. . . Give not thy tongue too great a liberty, lest it take thee prisoner. — 
Samuel Maunder. 

One of the advantages of the negative part assigned to women in 
life is that they are seldom forced to commit themselves. They can, 
if they choose, remain perfectly passive while a great many things 
take place in regard to them : they need not account for what they do 
not do. From time to time, a man must show his hand ; but, save for 
one supreme exchange, a woman need never show hers. She moves 
in mystery as long as she likes ; and mere reticence in her, if she is 
young and fair, interprets itself as good sense and good taste. — 
W. D. Howells {The Lady of the Aroostook, p. 52). 



276 RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED 

Page 216. 

I give thoughts words, and words truth, and truth boldness. She 
whose honest freeness makes it her virtue to speak what she thinks 
will make it her necessity to think what is good. — John Marston. 

Page 217. 

True courage scorns 
To vent her prowess in a storm of words ; 
And to the valiant action speaks alone. 

Tobias Smollett ( The Regu . 

Passion, when deep, is still. . . . 

The keen, fixed orbs that burn and flash below 

. . . are the language it empl- 

James G. Per 

Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth, 

And silver waves chime ever peacef 
And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it i 

Disturbs the sabbath of that deeper 
So to the heart that knows thy love.-O Pw 

There is a temple sacred evermore ; 
And all the Babel of life's am;- 

Dies in hushed still: j>eaceful door. 

HmrriH B. Sterne. 

The scourge of earth, the scorn of heaven, 
He falls, unwept and unf* g 

And all his guilty glories fade. 
Like a crushed reptile in the dust he 
And Hate's last lightnings quiw - 

Char Us Sprague. 



Page 224. 



Page 251. 



Page 252. 



I love by faith to tak 

Of bright 
The prospect doth m\ 

While here by tempests dr 

And we shall see his face; 
Then with our Saviour, brother, friend, 
A blest eternity we'll spend 

Triumphant in 



And while your tears are falling hot 
Upon the lips which ai 
You'll take from tht- -ured tress, 

And leave the n 
Remember that I used to - 
" You'll think of this * day,— 

Some d.. 

Some other world is glad to see 

Our star that's gone awav : 
The light whose going makes our nig 

Makes somewhere els 



Phabe //. Brew 



Samite/ Medley. 



Florence I 



t J. Savage {Elt*~ m/ok . CooiUge\ 



QUOTATION INDEX. 



Abbott, Abdiel, 217. 

Abbott, Edwin A., 32. 

Abbot, Ezra, 35, 71. 

Abdalrahmaii, 230. 

Adams, Nehemiah, 151. 

Adams, Robert C, 151. 

Addison, Joseph, 238. 

iEsop, 182. 

Agathon, 189. 

Akers (see " Florence Percy"). 

Alcott, A. Bronson, 91, 246. 

Alger, Wm. R., 202. 

Allen, E. A. (see " Florence Percy"). 

Allen, Joseph H., 17. 

Ambrose, St., 164. 

Ames, Charles G., 14, 80. 

Ames, Fisher, 186. 

Angelo, Michael, 126. 

Anstice, Joseph, 275. 

Antoninus, Marcus, 239. 

Applebee, James K., 54. 

Aristotle, 64, 66, 1S9, 239, 255. 

Arius, 53, 55. 

Armstrong, John, 265. 

Arnold, Edwin, 205. 

Arnold, Matthew, 10, 30, 32, 58, 91, no, 

128, 1S3, 218,223. 
Athanasius, St., 55. 
Atwater, L. H., 91. 
Auerbach, Berthold, 216. 
Augustine, St., 72, 91, 92, 253. 

Bache, Sarah, 275. 

Bacon, Francis, 31. 

Bailey, Philip J., 241. 

Baillie, Joanna, 176. 

Ballou, Hosea, 19, 216. 

Bancroft, George, 12. 

Barbauld, Anna L., 251. 

Baring- Gould, Sabine, 21. 

Barrett, B. F., 56. 

Barrows, Samuel J., 142, 143, 222, 232. 

Bartol, Cyrus A., 78. 

Baxter, Richard, 97. 

Beach, Seth C, 200. 

Beaconsfield, Ld. (see " Disraeli "). 

Beard, Charles F., 265. 



Beattie, James, 250. 

Beaumont, Francis, 215. 

Beecher, Henry W., 76, 8S, 100, 132, 141, 

231, 266. 
Bellows, Henry W., 243. 
Ben Azai, 156. 
Benjamin, Park. 267. 
Beyschlag, Willibald, 30. 
Bias, 219. 

Bisbee, Herman, 226, ff. 
Blackstone, William, 225. 
Blair, Robert, 224. 
Boardman, George D., 126. 
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 30, 77. 
Bonar, Horace, 250. 
Borthwick, Jane, 2 68. 
Bossuet, Jacques B., n, 30. 
Bowring, John, 174, 241. 
Bremer, Frederika, 139. 
Bristol, Augusta C, 19. 
Bronte, Charlotte, 76. 
Brooke, Stopford, 216. 
Brooke, Ld. (see " Greville "). 
Brooks, Phillips, 122. 
Brougham, Henry, Ld., 271. 
Brown, John, Dr., 168. 
Brown, John, Rev., 222. 
Brown, Phcebe H., 269. 
Browning, Elizabeth B., 236. 
Browning, Robert, 74. 
Bruyere, John de la, 13S. 
Bryant, Wm. C, 14, 251, 252, 253 
Buckle, Henry T., 100. 
Buckminster, Joseph S., 139, 187. 
Buddha (Gautama), 162,239. 
Buddha Sakya, 135. 
Buffon, Comte de (G. L. le Clerc), 129. 
Bulwer, Edward Lytton, 76, 90, 174. 
Bunyan, John, 164, 173, 182. 
Burke, Edmund, 76, 177. 
Burnham, Benjamin, 132. 
Burnham, Celeste S., 16, 212. 
Burnham, George W., n. 
Burnham, Thomas J., 88. 
Burnham, Virtue H., 235. 
Burns, Robert, 97, 135, 140. 
Bush, George, 56. 



278 



QUOTATION INDEX 



Bushnell, Horace, 212. 
Butler, Joseph, 9, 183. 
Butler, Samuel, 137, 140. 
Byron, George Gordon, Ld., 12, 121, 174, 
266. 

Calhoun, John C., 77. 

Calvin, John, 205. 

Campbell, Thomas, 63. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 13, 76, 80, 123, 184,209, 

229. 
Carpenter, Wm. B., 202. 
Cary, Alice, 251. 
Cary, Phoebe, 158. 
Case, Lizzie Y., 20. 
Catlin, Hasket D., 155. 
Cervantes, Miguel de S., ii. 
Chadwick, John W., v, 23, 24, 3S, 48, 53. 

55, 64, 86, 90, 112, 150, 176, 191, 198, 

200, 245. 
Chalmers, Thomas, 171. 
Channing,Wm. E.,iii, 11,78,91,213, 249. 
Chapin, Edwin H., 129, 153. 
Chateaubriand, Comte de, 130. 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 236. 
Cheney, Ednah D., 165. 
Chesterfield, Earl of (P. D. Stanhope), 99. 
Child, Lydia M., 11, 76, 259, 263. 
Cicero, 131, 224. 
Clark, Adam, 198. 
Clark, Luella, 57. 
Clark, Willis G., 171,252. 
Clarke, Edward H., 169, 269, 271, 273. 
Clarke, James Freeman, 16, 28, 29, 52, 75, 

78,81, 89, 115, 121, 128, 131, 139, 154, 
158, 160, 163, i74» i75> «7*i 202, 207, 
214, 219, 231,253. 

Cleland, John, 202. 

Clemens, Samuel (see " Mark Twain "). 

Clement of Alexandria, St., 138. 

Clement Romanus, St., 1S9. 

Clemmer, Mary, 135. 

Cobbe, Frances P., 142, 269. 

Coleridge, Samuel T., 153, 197. 

Collyer, Robert, 243. 

Colton, Caleb C, 235. 

Combe, George, 89. 

Confucius, 64, 76, 133, 157, 177. 

Conway, Moncure D., i, 32, 53, 58, 61, 
100, 109, 126, 140, 149, 223. 

Cook, Joseph, 13, 22, 53, 225. 

Cossitt, Charlotte, 100. 

Cousin, Victor, 63, 255, 258. 

Cowley, Abraham, 217. 

Cowper, William, 13, 78, 137, 229. 

Cranch, Christopher P., 217. 

Cross, Marian G. Evans (see ''George 
Eliot"). 

Curtis, George W., iii. 

Cuyler, Theodore, 246. 

Dana, Richard H., 238. 



Dante, Alighieri, 224. 

D'Aubigne', Merle, iii. 

Davenant, William, 13. 

Davidson, Samuel, 17, 22, 182. 

Davies, John, 236. 

De Finod, J., 13, 130. 

De Insulis (see " Insulis "). 

Disraeli, Benjamin (Earl of Beacons- 
field), 126. 

Dekker, Thomas, 79. 

D'Ossoli, Countess (see " Fuller, Mar- 
ret "). 

De Ouincey, Thomas, 225. 

Derzhavin, Gabriel R., 241. 

De Stael-Holstein, Baronne (Anna L. G. 
Ncckcr*. 77, 148, 268. 

Desca: , 256. 

De W 1 I. ., 14& 

v, Orville, . 

Dickens, Charles, 11, 77. 

DilUm, Went worth (see "Roscommon, 
Earl 

, 129. 
aac, 206. 
213. 
Draper, J. W . 
Drummon 

Drummond, William, 13. 
Dryden, John, 20, 99, 140, 216. 
Du Moulin, Lc 
Durbin, John P 
Dutton, J. 133, 244- 

r, John H 

it, Charles J., 21. 

Emerson, Ralph W., 30, 41, 

160, 209, 215, 1 
Emmons, N 
Epic: 

tine, Thomas, 211. 
Eusebius, 54. 

trd, 266. 
Ewald, G. H. A. von. 30, 44, 70, 74 

Faber, George S., 2 
Fairbairn, Angus, 250. 
Farrar, F. W., 221. 

Caroline, 20. 
Feitham, » 

Fenelon, Francis de S., 164. 
Fichte, John G. T., 96, 145, 256. 
Fielding, Henry, 76. 
Fields, James T , iii, 135. 
Fislur. George P.. 1 
Fletcher, Richard. 76, 215. 
"Florence Pi tmd. of Y 

Allen, formerly III 
Forbes, James. 
Foster, John, 115. 



QUOTATION INDEX 



279 



Fowle, Thomas W., 10, 106. 

Fowler, Orson S., 233. 

Fox, George, 109 

Franklin, Benjamin, 176. 

Frothingham, Octavius B., v. 

Froude, Anthony, 13. 

Fuller, Margaret (Countess d'Ossoli), 

187, 237. 
Fuller, Thomas, 160, 237. 
Furness, William H., 70, 181, 213. 

Galen, 156. 

Gannett, Wm, C., 165. 

Garfield, James A., ii, 122. 

Garth, William, 238. 

Gasparin, Countess de, A. E., 133. 

Geikie. Cunningham, 48, 103, 114, 175. 

" George Eliot ^ (Pseud, of Marian G. 

Evans Cross), 8. 77, 87, 89, 118, 139, 

x 57> 2 3o, 263. 
Gibbon, Edward, 90. 
Girardin, Emile de, 230. 
Gladstone, William E , 116, 128. 
Goethe, John W. von, 14, 61, 80, 91, 

115, 120, 130, 168, 188, 215, 219, 238. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, v, 78. 
Gotter, Ludwig A., 275. 
Gould (see " Baring-Gould "). 
Gracian, Balthasar, 216. 
Grange, Olrig, 79. 
Gray, Thomas, 115. 
Greeley, Horace, 224. 
Greenleaf, Simon, 39. 
Greenough, Sarah D., 42. 
Greville, Fulke (Ld. Brooke), 137. 
Griesbach, John J., 21. 
Griffin, Richard A., 24. 

Hale, Edward E., 42. 

Hale, Matthew, 185. 

Hale, Sarah J., 99, 268. 

Haley, J. W., 17. 

Hall, Edward H., 35. 

Hall, Elvina M., 205. 

Hall, Joseph, 76. 

Hall, Robert, 216. 

Hall, Ruth P., 236. 

Halleck, Fitz G , 136. 

Hamilton, William, 12. 

Hammond, William A., 167. 

Hardenberg, F. von (see " Novalis "). 

Hare, Francis, 97. 

Harris, W. T., 257. 

Hase, Carl A., 180. 

Hawkesworth, John, 253. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 11, 97. 

Hayes, John L., 122. 

Hayes, Rutherford B., v. 

Hazlitt, William, 13, 76, 90. 

Hedge, Frederic H., iv, 18, 58, 94, 130, 

209. 
Hegel, G. W. F., 54, 256. 



Heine, Heinrich, 12, 92. 

Helps, Arthur, 76. 

Hemans, Felicia D., 79. 

Henry, Matthew, 76, 198. 

Henshaw, J. P. K., 76. 

Heraclitus, 262. 

Herbert, George, iii, 13, 90, 119, 133, 

216, 224. 
Herodotus, 81. 
Herrick, Marcellus A., 130. 
Higginson, Thomas W., 64, 162. 
Hill, Aaron, 176. 
Hillel, 133. 
Hodge, Charles, 232. 
Holland, Josiah G., 75, 131. 
Holmes, Oliver W., 90, 99, 137, 152, 217. 
Holtzmann, Heinrich J., 71. 
Hood, Thomas, 130, 140. 
Hooykaas, I., 66, 190, 194. 
Hopkins, Samuel, 232. 
Hopps, John P., 243. 
Horace, 81. 
Home, George, 162. 
Houssaye, Arsene, 77. 
Howells, W. D., 275. 
Howitt, Mary, 19. 
Hugo, Victor, 142,164, 244. 
Humboldt, Alexander von, 120. 
Hume, David, 11, 181. 
Hunt, Leigh, 147. 
Huxley, Thomas H., 99. 

Ingelow, Jean, 217. 
Insulis, Ansalus de, 157. 
Irving, Edward, 66. 
Irving, Washington, 69, 136. 

Jameson, Anna M., 123. 

Jefferson, Thomas, vi. 

Jeffrey, Francis, Ld., 134. 

Jerome, St., 76, 163, 175. 

Johnson, Mary E. C, 139. 

Johnson, Samuel, iv, 89, 126, 240. 

Jones, J. M., 187. 

Jones, Wm., 178. 

Jonson, Ben, 147. 

Josephus, Flavius, 45, 47, 66, 102, 189. 

Joubert, Francis, 13, 237. 

Justin Martyr, v, 21, 35, 71. 

Kant, Immanuel, 234, 255, 258. 
Keats, John, 141. 
Keim, Theodor, 32. 
Kempis, Thomas a, 91, 157. 
Kepler, Johann, 185. 
Khayyam, Omar, 205. 
King, T. Starr, 101. 
Kingsley, Charles, 156. 
Kirchdorfer, J. S., 71. 
Knox, Alexander, 170. 
Krauth, Charles P., 232. 
Kuenen, Abraham, 22, 23. 



280 



QUOTATION* INDEX 



Kuntze, Otto, 186 

LaFontaine, Jean de, 156. 

Lamartine, Alphonse, 267. 

Lamb, Charles, 251. 

Landon, Letitia E., 270. 

Landor, Walter S., 148. 

Lanier, Sidney, 136. 

Lao-tze, 63. 

Larcom, Lucy, 247. 

Larrabee, Benjamin F., 246. 

Lavater, John G., 216. 

Learned, JohnC, 127. 

Lee, Luther, 56. 

Leibnitz, Gottfried W., 96. 

Leonowens, Anna H., 170. 

Lessing, Gotthold E., 12. 

Lewes-Cross (see " George Eliot "). 

Lightfoot, John, 32, 187. 

Lincoln, Abraham, vi. 

Lippincott, Sara J. C, 80. 

Lipsius, Richard A., 71. 

Locke, John, 10, 13, 78, 89. 

Lockhart, John G., 225. 

Long, John D., 194. 

Longfellow, Henry W., 77, 82, 92, 124, 

i57» 237, 238, 247- 
Longfellow, Samuel, 221. 
Lovelace, Richard, 78. 
Lowell, James R., 43, 80, 141, 1S9, 1 
Lucan, 69. 

Luthardt, Christian E., 120. 
Luther, Martin, 192. 
Lyon, Mary, 17S. 
Lyte, Henry F., 275. 
Lyttelton, George, Ld., 78. 

Macaulay, Thomas B., 93, 115, 121, 122. 

McCosh, James, iii. 

McCrie, George, 210. 

MacDonald, George, 224. 

Mackay, Charles, 137. 

Mackintosh, James, jj. 

McLean, John, 11. 

Mallet, David, 76. 

Manes, 96. 

Mann, Horace, 12. 

Mansfield, Joseph H., -5. 

" Mark Twain " {Pseud, of Samuel Clem- 

ens), 151. 
Marston, John, 76, 276. 
Martensen, Hans L., 55, 94, 96. 
Martineau, James, 120,241. 
Martyr (see " Justin "). 
Mary, Queen of Scots, 252. 
Maunder, Samuel, 77, 265, 266, 267, 

275. 
Maurice, F. D., 183. 
Maximus, Tvrius, 64. 
May, Samuel J., 56. 
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 133. 
Medley, Samuel, 269. 



Merriam, George S., 19. 
Merrick, James, 158. 
Merivale, Herman, 250. 
Metcalf, Richard, 239. 
Michelet, Jules, 267. 
Miles, Sarah E., 275. 
Mill, John S., ii, 182. 
Miller, Hugh, 
Miller, Joaquin, 97. 

I 
Milton, John, iii, iv, 77, 85, 88, 90, 135, 
1 

tede (H. G. Riquet; 
Mitchell, Donald G., 77. 
Mohammed, 237. 

1 chael de, 187, 276. 

Mo<> 

251. 
More, Han nali. 

-'58. 
Mora 

: XX 

Man ... W. H H., v, 131. 

1 O., 251. 

Id H., 14, 

inch von 
76. 

Omar Khayyam, 205. 
1 

eus, 63. 

*33- 

I .62. 
Palm 

Park ,80. 

v 10. 
Adoniram I.. 225. 
Patten, Claudia 

Paul, S : Index). 

Paul. 

Paulus, Heinrich E. G., 1 
Peabodv, Andre 
Peabv d > G., 159. 

Penn, V 
Perc: 
Percv 
Phelps, Elizabeth S., 



QUOTATION INDEX 



28l 



Pierpont. John, 268. 

Phillips, Wendell, 12, 120. 

Philo Judseus, 37, 189. 

Piatt, John J., 233. 

Piatt, Sarah M. B., 79. 

Pilate (see "Acts"), 177. 

Piper, George F., 23. 

Pitman, Isaac, 187. 

Plato (see Analytical Index). 

Pliny, 189. 

Plotinus, 161. 

Plutarch, 266. 

Pond, Enoch, 232. 

Pope, Alexander, iv, 52, 62, 89, 146, 

235- 
Porter, Jane, 224. 
Porter, Noah, 140. 
Powell, Wm. S., 76. 
Preault, Auguste, 177, 216. 
Pressense, Edmond de, 124. 
Price, Robert, 237 
Prime, Samuel I., 149. 
Procter, Adelaide A., 138. 
Procter, Bryan W., 268. 
Punchard, George, 215 
Pythagoras, 52, 64. 

Quarles, Francis, xo, 76, 137, 163. 
11 Queen," 141. 

Raleigh, Walter, 217. 

Raymond, Henry J., 134. 

Realf, Richard, 90. 

Reid, Thomas, 255. 

Renan, J Ernest, 188. 

Reville, Albert, 53. 

Richter, Jean Paul F., 77, 139, 156. 

Riddle, David, 172 

Robertson, Frederick W., 225. 

Rochefoucauld, Due de, 140. 

Rogers, Samuel, 79, 136. 

Roscommon, Earl of (W. Dillon), 135. 

Rousseau, Jean J., 11. 

Rowe, Nicholas, 211. 

Rush, Benjamin, 167. 

Ruskin, John, 90 

Russell, Thomas, vi. 

Russell, William, 275. 

Ryder, Wm. H., 89, 151, 231. 

Ryland, John, 149. 

Saadi, Moslih-Eddin, 77. 

Sabellius, 53. 

Sadi Gul, 187. 

Saint Augustine, etc. (see " Augustine, 

St.," etc.). 
Sallust, 69. 
Saurin, Jacques, 193. 
Savage, Minot J., 93, 143* 185, 276. 
Savage, Wm. H., 75. 
Schelling, W. J., 256, 258. 
Schenkel, Daniel, 32. 



Schiller, John F. C, 217. 
Schleiermacher, Friedrich E. D., 21, 44, 

51, 93, 96, 181. 
Scholten, John H., 22. 
Schumann, I., 11. 
Scott, Walter, 18, 26, 88, 225, 241. 
Scudder, Eliza, 165. 
Sears, Edmund H., 39, 181. 
Seeley, John R., 73, 116, 117, 119. 
Selden, John, 13, 216. 
Seneca, 123. 

Shaftesbury, Earl A. A. C, 115. 
Shakspere, Wm., i, 9, n, 114, 152, 156, 

186, 216. 
Shelley, Percy B., 89, 238. 
Sheridan, R. Brinsley, 141, 144. 
Shippen, Rush R., 131. 
Shute, Henry, 19. 
Sidney, Philip, 10. 
Sigourney, Lydia H., 137. 
Smith, Alexander, 136. 
Smith, Elizabeth O., 267. 
Smith, Mary R., 246. 
Smith, Sydney, 130, 216. 
Smollett, Tobias, 276. 
Smyth, Newman, 15, 25, 31, 33, 42, 106, 

131, 202, 211, 249. 
Socinus, 53. 

Socrates (see Analytical Index). 
Sophocles, 265, 267. 
Southey, Robert, iii. 
Spencer, Herbert, 201. 
Spenser, Edmund, 14, 253. 
Spinoza, Benedict, 180. 
Sprague, Charles, 276. 
Spurgeon, Charles H., 231. 
Staniforth, Sampson, 169. 
Staniev, Arthur P., 114, 124, 211. 
Stebbins, RufusP., 182. 
Steele, Anna, 251. 
Sterne, Lawrence, 11. 
Stillingfleet, Edward, 164. 
Stewart, Dugald, 255. 
Storrs, Richard S., 225. 
Story, Joseph, 129. 
Story, Wm. W, 79, 217. 
Stowe, Harriet B., 78, 142, 276. 
Strauss, David F., 41, 190. 
Strong, James, 38, 105. 
Sumner, Charles, 12. 
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 88, 213, 249. 
Swetchin, Anna S. S., 20, 164. 
Swift, Jonathan, 12, 139. 
Swing, David, 112, 141. 

Tacitus, 45, 189. 

Taine, Hippolyte A., 89. 

Tappan, Wm. B., 250. 

Taylor, Edward, 231. 

Taylor, J. Bayard, 61. 

Taylor, Jeremy, 10, 158, 224. 

Temple, Henry J. (see " Palmerston "). 



282 



QUOTATION INDEX 



Tennyson, Alfred, vi, 79, 90, 100, 

154, i57> 22 4, 234, 250. 
Thackeray, Wm. M., 238.. 
Thayer, George A., 236. 
Tholuck, F. A. G., 148. 
Thorn, J. H., 160. 
Thomson, James, 79. 
Thoreau, Henry B., 57, 130, 138. 
Tighe, Mary, 78. 
Tilton, Theodore, 174. 
Tischendorf, Lobegott F. C, 22. 
Trench, Richard C, 179, 182, 190. 
Trowbridge, J. T., 181. 
Tulloch, John, 97. 
Tyndall, John, 130, 184. 
Tyng, Stephen H., 146. 
Tyrwhitt, Thomas, 249. 

Ullman, Carl, 206. 

Vaughan, Henry, 251, 253. 
Venetus, Marcus P., 236. 
Vinet, Alexander R., 177. 
Virgil, 194. 
Voltaire, Francis M. A. de, iv. 

Waite, Charles B., 21, 22. 
Waller, Edmund, 237. 
Walton, Izaak, 88. 
Warburton, Wm., v. 
Waring, Ann L., 165. 
Washington, George, 134. 
Wasson, David A., 124. 
Watts, Isaac, 251. 



36, Webster, Daniel, 89, 90. 
Weiss, Bernhard, 274. 
Weiss, John, 63. 
Wellington, Duke of, 148. 
Wendte, Charles W., 211. 
Wesley, Charles, 204. 
Wesley, John, 216. 
Westcott, Brooke F., 21. 
Whately, Richard, 10. 
Whedon, Daniel D., 30. 
Whipple, Edwin P., 12. 
White, Henry K ,79. 
Whitney, Adaline D. T., 245. 
Whittier, John G., 14, 88, 109, 146, 162, 

192, 220, 224,232, 234, 267, 2 
Wilcox, Carlos, 266. 
Williams, H. T., 149. 
Willis, Nathaniel P., 69. 
Winslow, Edward, 142. 
Wirt, Wm., iv. 
Withrow, T L , 167. 232. 
Woolsey, Theodore D., 92. 

Isworth, Wm., 12, 78, 162, 217, 244. 
Wotten, Henrv, 81. 
Wright, Wm. B.,2i 3 . 



Xenophon, 81. 

Young, Edward, 13, 20, 21 
Young, Th 

Ziegler, W. C. L.,2i S . 
Zoroaster, 50, 6:, 
Zschokke, J. H. de, 23S, 



23S. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX. 



Abandonment of the hierarchy, 109. 

Abraham, Sadi's legend of, 187. 

Absolute, comprehending the, 258. 

Abstract — theory of God, 56; virtues, 130. 

Absurdities not mysteries, 9. 

Abuses and uses of faculties, 88. 

Accretions of tradition, 40 If ; upon the 
baptism, 71 ; the temptation, 74 ; the res- 
urrection, 197. 

Action — and thought, 91, 92 ; in heaven, 
253; and being, 256; happiness, 266. 

Acts — of the Apostles, 35; of Pilate, 

21, 193. 

Adam, fall of, 96 ff, 100, 206. 

Adaptation to the hearers, 107, no; and 
environment, 201. 

Adieu, 254. 

Adultery, 134. 

Adversity beneficent, 76. 

./Esthetics in theory of God, 256. 

Affectation, 215 ff. 

Affection, woman's life, 136; never lost, 
238; immortal, 247, 250, 252. 

Affronts, parrying, 137, 176, 267. 

Age and youth, 267. 

Aggression, 175 ff. 

Agony and achievement, 78. 

Ahaz and Isaiah, 51. 

Alexandrian — library, v; school, 35, 259* 

Allegory in scriptures, 41. 

Alleviation of woes, 166 ff, 268. 

Allocution, 113 ff. 

Amusements, 211. 

Analogy and miracles, 183. 

Ancestry of Jesus, 44 ff. 

Andrew and Peter, 85, 103, 105. 

Anger, 134, 267. 

Angels at the birth, 46 ff ; at the sepul- 
chre, 193, 196, 198 ; deified persons, 
234; future human beings, 249 ; simile, 

2 53- 

Annunciation to Mary, 46 ff. 

Answers to prayer, 149 ff. 

Anthropomorphism, 58 ff , 64. 

Antipas (See " Herod "). 

Aphorisms — are judgments of sages af- 
firmed, iii; on faith and reason, 9 ff ; 



on inspiration, 30 ; on accretion, 43 ;. 
on God, 63, 64; on sympathy, 69; on 
trials and character-discipline, 76 ff; 
on mirth and cheerfulness, 88; on. 
culture, 89 ff; on poetry and parables, 
115, on religion, 120; on duty and 
morals, 130 ff ; on chastity and woman r 
135, 136; on manners, 137; on kind- 
ness, 138; on bigotry, 139; on aspira- 
tion, 156, 157, 164; on meekness, 176; 
on arrogance and humility, 215 ff; on 
clamor and stillness, 216, 217; on guilt 
and punishment, 224, 225; on happi- 
ness, 230; on immortality, 236 ff; oil 
heaven, 249 ff. 

Apocrypha, dates of records, 23. 

Apollo — and Jupiter, 261 ; and Thor, 262,. 

Apollos, 36, 214. 

Apollyon, 182. 

Apparitions, 188, 197, 271 ff. 

Application of Scripture, 18. 

Approximative language, no. 

A priori theories, 180. 

Aramaic records, 21, 32, 71. 

Araunah and David, 16. 

Arbela, 103, 114. 

Arbitrary grouping, 39. 

Arimanes and Ormuzd, 260. 

Aristotelian theory of God, 255. 

Arius — at Nicsea, 53 ff ; death of 183. 

Arms, simile, 1 19, 246. 

Army-baggage, simile, 268. 

Arraignment of Jesus, 176. 

Arrogance and modesty, 2 16, 275. 

Art, progress of, 59 ; and beauty, 141. 

Ascension, 198. 

Asceticism, 68, 88, 97, 140, 261, 266. 

Aspiration, 156 ff. 

Associated charities, 146. 

Associations, as affecting the discourses,. 
102, 103. 

Assyrian — period of O. T. records, 23 ; 
mythology, 223. 

Astrolatry, 58. 

Athanasian creed, 55. 

Atonement — to pay Satan, 95; inter- 
cessional view of, 204 ff ; at-one-ment. 



.284 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



view, 212 ff; mythological and moral 

theories of, 219. 
Aum and Brahm, 259, 260. 
Autumn, simile, 266. 

Babbling and repression, 215, 217. 
Babe and prayer, 153 ft. 
Babylonian ideas, 223, 259 ff. 
Bad and good, relative, 97. 
Baggage, simile, 268. 
Balaam and Hyrcanus, 263. 
Banners and ideals, 123. 
Baptism of Jesus, 71. 72. 
Baptist (see "John"). 
Bat, simile, 170. 
Bathsheba, 134. 

Battle — and character, 77; flags, 123. 
Beacon, simile, 212. 
Beatitudes, 113, 132. 

Beauty — comprehended only by its lov- 
ers, 16; and truth, 115; and art, 141; 
transfigured in heaven, 252 ; female, 254- 
Bee, simile, 236. 
Begotten and unbegotten, 53 ff. 
Being and action, 256. 
Belief — depends on disposition, 140, 265 ; 

canons of, 1S2, 1S4. 
Ben Adhem legend, 147. 
Bethesda miracle, 179. 
Bethlehem not the birth-place, 49. 
Bethsaida blind man, 180. 
Bible — no unit or fetich, 9; good-will 
for, 16; distortion of, 17 ; books of and 
dates, 23; inspired because true, 27; 
not book of divinity but of life, 
from necessities of the times, 34 ; 
ure of life struggles, 42 ; educational 
method of, 43 ; growth of, 43 ; its own 
corrective, 43. 
Bigotry, ii v, 140, 1S6 ff. 
Birds, simile, 236, 275. 
Birth (see "Nativity"). 
Blinking censors, 140. 
Blind — man, miracle, 179; simile, 191; 

heart is, 215. 
Boasting and profession, 215 ff, 175, 
Body — and soul, 233; decaying before 

mind, 237; in heaven, 249. 
Bombast, precept against, 215. 
Borrowing trouble, 138. 
Bowing to straighten, simile, 135. 
Boyhood discipline, 8a. 
Brahm and Aum, 259, 260. 
Brahmin divination, 263. 
Brotherhood, God's method, 120. 
Brougham's pseudopia, 271. 
Buddha, birth of, star-heralded, 47 ; un- 
der the bo-tree, 74. 
Buddhists' reception of praying men, 156. 
Buni, beast mesmerizer, 170. 
Burial service, 100. 
.Busyrane inscriptions, 216. 



Cabalistic theory of God, 260 ff. 
Callender and Duny, 185. 
Calumny, 134, 139, 268. 
Calvin on apostasy, 96 ; on election, 2- 

on redemption, 205; conversion, 207 ff. 
Calyxes, simile, 246. 
Cana, 102, 105, 1 
Cannon, simile, 224. 
Canon of disbelief, 182, 184. 
Capernaum, 102. 
Caprice and law, 180. 
Carmel, 103. 

Carnal and spiritual conditions, . 
Catechism, 

2 5S- 
Cathedral, simile, II. 

140. 

Cenn ant, 190. 

180. 
C 

Chalc! 

be studied, ii, 266; 
: • - 
cf, • of, 76 ft; notemo- 

indicated in tr 
Chariti 

■ 

le, 90. 
Child km; hop*. 

244 . as to soul, 2j4 ; I 

formed in 
Chi. 
Chill 
Chinese — 

186; the -"'O. 

Chi\ ;6. 

Chr 
Christianity, influence in h. 

above ethnic and philosophical rel^ 

120 : 

MS- 

Chr rds, 21 ff; 

Church. , \ he future, 1 

Cleaving of the 

Cle* 

Cliiv. 

Clouds, simile, I 

Cadi 1 

Coin in rish's ir. 180. 

Columbus and 29. 

Commanding manhood, 66. 
Community 
Composition of gos; 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



*5 



Conceit (see;' Self"). 

Conception, immaculate, 48; not super- 
natural, 51 ff. 

Concord school, 257. 

Conceteness of Sermon on Mount, 130. 

Condition and conduct, 83, 99, 126, 131. 

Confession of faith, 14, 17, 206. 

Congestion and visions, 272. 

Conscience — is not law, 11 ; denned, 91 ; 
Christ's appeal to, 115; in Hebraism, 
12- ; supreme, eternal, 137; inner light, 
145; expelled the traders, 175; makes 
heaven or hell, 225, 230. 

Consciousness of God, 258. 

Consecution of N. T. records, 21 ff. 

Conservation of forces, 173. 

Constantine at Nicaea, 55. 

Consumptives' Home, prayer supported, 

1 So- 
Contagious visions, 188, 197. 

Contemplation generates piety, 91, 157, 

172, 173. 

Continence, 134. 

Conventionality, 137, 140. 

Conversion — of Paul and Staniforth, 
169; transitional, 207 ff ; at-one-ment 
with God through Christ, 212 ff. 

Conviction, no greatness without, 15; 
and conversion, 210; not by overbear- 
ing, 265. 

Co-operation in ministration, 147, 268. 

Corruption blurs perception, 135. 

Cottage, simile, 237. 

Courage — of the right, 13, 66; acts, not 
talks, 216, 276. 

Courtesy, 137. 

Cousinian theory of God, 255. 

Covenant of redemption, 204, 205. 

Covetousness, 219. 

Creation, Persian idea of, 37; and evolu- 
tion, 202 ; theories of, 259. 

Creative word, 52, 260. 

Creeds, imperceptibly dropped, 94 ; fluc- 
tuating currency, 131; learning, 221. 

Cremona, simile, 40. 

Crime serves order, 235. 

Criminals, 99 ff. 

Criticism, precept on, 140, 268. 

Cross, only way to life, 79 ; emblem, 122 ; 
and crown, 155. 

Crotahis bite, 168. 

Crucifixion, 193, 215. 

Culture, philosophy of, 89; reduces in- 
flammations, 92; and anarchy, 127; 
purity a factor, 136; badges of, 215 ff. 

Cumberland's thought-reading, 168. 

Curative ministrations, 166 ff. 

Currency, simile, 131. 

Cynicism, 140. 

Cyrenius, 49. 

Daft catechumen, 221. 
Damnation, 222 ff, 276. 



Daniel — date of record, 23, 24; and 
Jonah, 182, 1S5. 

David — as ancestor, 44 ; Bathsheba, 134. 

Day-star, simile, 234. 

Dead raised, 179, 188. 

Dead Sea fruit, simile, 254. 

Deaf — of heart, 171; man, miracle, 179.. 

Death — sum of misfortunes, 75 ; not from 
Adam, 100, 206; bed, 139, 174, 213, 
269; of P. P. Bliss, 151; landing, etc., 
new step, 238 ; mere transition, 247. 

Decalogue, date of, 23 ; regarded by 
Christ relatively, 108. 

Decency, 135. 

Deductive method, 25S. 

Deeps and shallows, simile, 217. 

Defeat, effect of on character, 74 ff. 

Deification, 58 ff. 

Delphic oracle, 263. 

Demas and Gestas, 193. 

Demiurge, 33, 52. 

Democracy and despotism, 120. 

Demonization, 93 ff, 98, 107, 167, 185. 

Denial spirit, 95. 

Departure from the temple, 109. 

Derangement (see " Insanity "). 

Desert, simile, 233. 

Destruction and fortune, 265. 

Development of Christ's character, 106 ff. 

Devil, 93 ff, 185, 223, 235, 261. 

Dewdrop, simile, 100. 

Dignity, 176. 

Disciples, choosing of the, 165; misap- 
prehended Christ, in, 176. 

Discipline of character, 74 ff. 

Discord, simile, 174. 

Discrepancies of Scriptures, 17. 

Discourses of Jesus, 113 ff 

Discretion, 215. 

Distortion of the records, 17. 

Ditheism, 53. 

Diversions, choice of, 211. 

Divinity of Christ, 52 ff, 106. 

Divorce, 135. 

Doctrinal piety, 173. 

Dominion of the higher, 127. 

Dort, Synod of, 233. 

Dove, symbol, 72 ; Noah's, 236. 

Dreams, 225, 239, 253, 272. 

Dress and ostentation, 215. 

Dualism, 93 ff, 260. 

Dum vivo, volOy 237. 

Dumb man, miracle, 179. 

Dunstan's miracles, 188. 

Dutch school, 190. 

Duty, nearest first, 130, 178, 210. 

Dying to live, 219. 

Earnestness, precepts on, 133. 
Earth and heaven apart, 97. 
Earthquake, 198. 
Easter, significance of, 199. 
Ebionite document, 47, 51, 71. 



*?WI 



^>86 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



Ecclesiastical spirit, 132. 
Eclectic interpretation, 265. 
Eclipse, simile, 258. 
Economy of time and energy, 138. 
Ecstasy and repression, 215. 
Eden, simile, 254. 

Edinburgh Presbytery's petition, 152. 
Educational — method of Bible, 43 ; life 
not probational, but, 75. 

Ego and non-ego, 55, 96. 

Egotism falls off, 240. 

Egyptian — mythology, 41, 53, 259 ff ; 
plagues, 182. 

Ejection of the traders, 175. 

Election, 201 ff, 274. 

Elijah and Moses, 172. 

Elizabeth, Queen, conscience of, 145. 

Elsie Venner, 99. 

Emmaus, 194. 

Emblems and ideals, 41, 122. 

Emotion, 101, 131, 173, 215, 217, 255 ff. 

Empirical experience, 257. 

End of the world, in. 

Enthusiasm, badge of faith, 129. 

Entry triumphal, 176. 

Environment — and adaptation, 201 ; har- 
monization with, 225. 

Envy, how escaped, 215. 

Epigrams, for action and memory, 41. 

Epistles of Paul, dates, 22, 34 
" Hebrews"). 

Equanimity, 138, 217. 

Error, Paul correcting, 30; Chris! 
108; embalmed by a little truth, 137. 

Esau and Jacob, 202. 

Essenes, 68, 104. 

Eternal Goodness, 232. 

Eternity, not comprehended, 227; 
tiye idea, 233 ; not length but depth, 240. 

Ethics progressive, 145. 

Ethnic religion, 119. 

Euphemisms, abuses of, 177. 

Everlasting Yea, 210. 

Evening, simile, 250. 

Evidence, rules of, 39. 

Evil and good, 97, 208, 228, 235, 260. 

Evolution — of peace on earth, £9 ; good- 
will to men, 60, 125 ff ; three factors of, 
201 ; and election, 202 ; in heaven, 253. 

Exaltation, 248 ff. 

Example — and precept, 116; superhu- 
man, of Jesus, 119, 214, 275. 

Exorcism, 95. 

Expansion of character, mission, 106 ff. 

Experience— of the race the standard of 
right, 143; induction and, 257. 

Expiation, origin of the idea, 213; the 
true, 214. 

Expression and silence, 217. 

Ezra, redaction by, 17, 33. 

Fable, truth in, 115: of father and sons, 
156; of Dead Sea fruit, 254. 



Failure and success, 74. 

Fairholme and geolog; 

Faith, function of, 9 rr, 184; salvation by, 
a universal law, 15; defined, 16; tem- 
per, 19; and regeneration, 118 ff; 
119; indispensable, 121; of youth, 129; 
in woman, 136; and hope, 147, 
and feel: ares, 166 ff; in man, 

213; not provable by syllogism, 239; 
in heaven, 251, 276. 

Fall ('see " Adai 

Fallibility of records. 

Falsehood, 137, 143. 

Fame, 217. 

Fantasies, 185 ff; 226. 

Fashion-following, badge of imbe* 
66, 

:$2. 

Fate and free-will, 201 ff, 203, 205, 207 ff. 
Fatherhoo 1 55. 

Fatherland of Q 124. 

Fault, greatest, 266. 
Faust, dm- 

19a 
Feeling — and 

100; and pr.. and utterance, 

215 ff. 

. :ty, 140. 
Fetichism, *8. 
Fetter, simile, 237. 
Fiction, truth in, 115. 

ry, 190. 
Finding God, 165. 

Fire, simile, 76; 2: purifica- 

tion z(>i. 

, 6a. 
Fish, tradition 
I -, miracle, 1 

Five hundred brethren, appearing to, 

195- 
i ind ideals, 122, 123. 

Flat: 

Fleeing to the Only, 161. 
Flood 1 
Flow 

249. 250. . 

Folk-lore, 185. 

Fool i, proverb, 13. 

Forbearan 

Foreordination, 201 ff. 

I ness, 134. 

Formal prayer. 1 

Fortune, smiling, means mischief, 265. 

Fountain, - 

Fourth Gospel, authorship of, 32, 35; pe- 

culiaritk- 116. 

Frankness and truth, 21s. 276. 
Fraternity and c . 120. 

Free-will \ 
Freedom and qc -;, 56, 209; and 

fidelity, 147. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



287 



Trench theory of God, 255. 

Friends, sympathy of, 69 ; meeting of 

the, 220 ; reunion of, 253. 
Furies, 224. 
Future probation and punishment, 222 

S — comprehension of the, 234, 244. 

Gabriel, 46. 

Gadarene lunatic, 179. 

Galilee, 102. 

Gargoyles, theological, 139. 

Gaulonitis, 102. 

Gautama, 93, 205. 

Gehenna, 107, 134, 222. 

Genealogy of Jesus, 44 ff. 

Genesareth, 85, 102. 

Genesis, cosmology of, Persian, 37. 

Genetic method, 257. 

Genius and energy, 90. 

Gentiles, dispute on, 38. 

Geology and the Bible, iS. 

German theory of God, 255. 

Gethsemane, n, 124. 

Ghost, "seen," 93; folk-lore, 185; con- 
juror's, 188 ; Cock- Lane, 197; fear, 273. 

Girard's will, iv. 

Glass, simile, 52, 226, 250. 

Gnostic belief, 33, 52. 

Goats, parable of, 223, 247. 

Goblins and folk-lore, 185. 

God, Trinitarian and Unitarian views of, 
52 ff; anthropomorphic, atheistic, and 
ideal views of, 58 ft; ''who dare ex- 
press him? " 61 ; and the universe, 61 ; 
love fills our conception of, 62 ; father- 
hood of, 116; "take my hand," 155; 
*' was kinder than my prayer," 164; 
in Christ, 173 ; nature " the living gar- 
ment" of, 209; " omnipotent reign- 
eth," 226; ode to, 241 ; "knew best," 
246; philosophical theories as to the 
mind's knowledge of, 255 ff. 

Golden rule, 133 ff, 138 ff. 

Good — and evil (see " Evil "); wrought 
by "good in thought," 80; men and 
bad, 97; breeding, 137; "be," "and 
let who will be clever," 156. 

Good-will essential to understand the 
Bible, 16. 

Gospel — of Nicodemus, 21, 199; of the 
Infancy, 21, 50; of the Hebrews, 71. 

Gospels, four (see "Matthew," "Mark," 
" Luke," and " Fourth Gospel "). 

Government and miracle, 180. 
Grace to pray, paradox, 158. 

Grandiloquence, precept against, 215. 

Great and small, relative only, 126. 
Greek — period of records, 23; theory 

of God and mind, 255. 
Grief beneficent, 133 ; solaced in heaven, 

2 53- 
Grounds of disbelief , 182, 184. 
Grouping of events, 39. 



Growth — of Christ's mind, 107 ; of 

Christianity, 128. 
Guard at the'tomb, 198. 
Guide in Mammoth Cave, simile, 27. 
Guilt and penalty, 22 4. 

Habits — of Jesus, 104; sowing, "reap a 

character," 126. 
Hagiographa records, 24. 
Hamiltonian theory of God, 255. 
Hampden and Washington, 121. 
Hannah, 46. 

Happiness and misery, 230. 
Harbor, simile, 248, 253. 
Harmonization — of four gospels, 38; of 

human tendencies, 87 ff; of scriptures 

with nature and reason, 190, 191. 
Harrow, simile, 211. 
Hatred, 134, 276. 
Hattin (or Chattin), 113, 114. 
Head and heart, 215. 
Healing the sick, 166, 170, 268. 
Heart — feels above reason, n ; of woman 

her world, 136; deafness of, 171; 

"throbs," 241. 
Heaven — near earth, 97 ; kingdom of, 

125 ff; Christ's use of the word, 227; 

theories of, 248 ff ; reunion in, 251 ff; 

defined, 252. 
Hebraism and Hellenism, 127. 
Hebrew — ideas, 41, 259 ff ; Bible's di- 
visions, 24. 
Hebrews, Epistle to the, 22, 34, 36, 214. 
Hell — Christ's use of the word, 107, no; 

three theories of, 222 ff . 
Hellenic and Christian ethics, 131. 
Hellenism and Hebraism, 127. 
Hen, simile, 103, 109. 
Hercules, choice of, 81. 
Heredity, 98, 201. 
Hermon, 114. 

Hermotimus and Hyrcanus, 263. 
Hero worship, 123. 
Herod Antipas, 67, 102, 177, 266. 
Herod the Great, 47, 49, 114. 
Herodias, 67, 103. 
Heroism and patience, 178. 
Heterodoxy, defined, v. 
High, the,"" the true, the beautiful," 254. 
Hillel, precepts of, 17, 130. 
Hindu traditions, 72, 259 ff. 
History, references to Christ, 45 ; drama 

of freedom, 97; and fiction, 115; 

Christianity^ 128. 
Holy Ghost, views concerning, 51 ff; sin 

against, 95. 
Home, 124, 136, 141, 147, 266. 
Homer and Zoilus, 268. 
Homogeneity in evolution, 201, 
Homoousian, 55. 
Honor, valor and discretion, 215. 
Honover, " word," 260. 
Hope and faith, 147, 173 ; angel, 233. 



288 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



Hopkins' theory, 232. 

Horatius and M'Cook, 122. 

Horns of Hattin (see " Chattin "). 

Hours "are golden links," 138. 

Hue and the Buddhists, 156. 

Humanity, progress of, 60. 

Humility, 132, 215 ff. 

Humor, " good," 88 ; of Jesus and Paul, 

266. 
Hunt's picture of the temple scene, ii. 
Husbandman, winnowing, 69. 
Hypocrisy and sincerity, 215 ff. 
Hypostases of a trinity, 55, 56 
Hysteria, 98. 

Idealism, vulgar notion of, 129. 
Ideals — of devotion and greatne^ 

117, 121 ff; of God, 59,60; "ang 

growth," 124; and realities, 130. 
Ideas of Paul (see " Paul "). 
Ideational theory of resurrection, 194 ff. 
Identity in heaven, 242. 
IdVeness and industry, 156. 
Idolatry, emblems and ideals, 41, 121 ff. 
Ignatius, silent on miracles, 189. 
Ignorance, malady of, 91. 
Imagination — and reason, ii, 9, ir, 

essential to goodness, 89. 
Immaculate conception, 48. 
Immortality — five arguments for, 233 ff ; 

not explained by Jesus, 240. 
Imperishable — "somethi: 

ures, 254. 
Imprecatory prayers and psalms, 152. 
Imps in folk-lore, 1S5. 
Impulse and action, 219. 
Inauguration of disciples and ministry, 

104 ff. 
Incarnation, 206. 
Inception of ministry, 102. 
Inchoatal argument, 236. 
Indelicacy, 135. 
Individuality in heaven, 242. 
Indoctrination, manner of, 114 ff; matter 

of, 130 ff. 
Induction and experience. 
Industry and idleness, 
Infallibility not necessary, 27. 
Infant and prayer, 153, 154. 
Infectious visions. 
Infidel, declamatory word. 139. 
Infidelity from literalism. 1 
Infinity, mind's knowledge of, 258. 
Infralapsarian theory, 96. 
Ingathering, training and work, 146. 
Ingratitude, let punish itself, 13S. 
Initiation, 71 ff. 
Injury, duty to repel, 177. 
Inn, simile, 253. 
Inner light, 145. 
Inoculation, 187. 
Insanity — and genius, 66; no distinct 



empire, 89; Oriental view of. 

medical view of, 98; and opposite 

keenness, 169; and visions, 271 fi\ 
Insect, simile, 33. 
Inspiration, two views of, 2 
Instinct, "swift," 20. 
Insult, duty to repel. 1 
Insurance in religion, 
Intellect, " meddling," misshapes. 
Intellection and emotion, 101, 215, 255 ff. 
Intemperance, 74. 
Intercessional view, 204 
Interpretation — of scriptures, 9 ff, 

190, 191, 265; "b< 
Intro? 
Intuitional schoo 

Isaiah, the First, j • Second, 

70, 86. 
Israelites, increase in Egypt, 182. 

Jacob and E*au, 20a. 
Jahveh, 66, 69. 

. 166, 191. 

name 

avar.' 

. 260. 
ilem, entry into, 17' .48. 

Jesus (compare th» -tents 

m of, 
203, 259 ff. 

. 197. 
John (see " Fourth Gospel"): the Bap- 

her, 44, 51 ; of Arimathea, 193. 

1 

Judas, the Gaulon;- 
t-cafcrus, 

r and Apollo, 1 

13. 
Justification by faith, 123, 204. 

heory of God, : 
Kindness, precepts on 

- 
evil cured . 

; depends on 
purity, 16, ije \ multiplies its own 
pow imparted, 133 ; de- 

pends or -46. 

Labor — 1 56 ; happiness, a66* 

Ladder 

Lamb of i 70, 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



289 



Lamps of heaven, simile, 247. 

Land — of the leal, 251 ; of Evermore, 253. 

Language in morals, 215 ff. 

Last supper, 195. 

Latin, Saxon proverb on, 13 . 

Law — of Moses (see " Decalogue ") ; of 
right and wrong, 145 ; breaks the trans- 
gressor, 206; of the spirit; 212. 

Leadership, 66. 

Learning is not wisdom, 13. 

Leaven, simile, 115. 

Leaves, simile, 249. 

Legends of the Bible, 40. 

Leiden school, 22. 

Lepers, cure of, 190. 

Licentiousness, 134, 267. 

Lie of nun to Javert, 142. 

Life, three aspects of, 9 ; educational, 
not probational, 75 ; victors in, 79 ; 
and love, 117; perfect in short meas- 
ures, 147; Christ lives, "of our life," 
221; truest end of, 237 ; childhood of 
immortality, 238. 

Light to shine, 133 : source of, simile, 
244; and eclipse, simile, 258. 

Lightning, simile, 115. 

Lily, simile, 91, 102, 138, 246. 

Link to future world, 234. 

Litanies unlearned, 221. 

Liturgy, 157, 158. 

Localizing heaven, 248. 

Location of the birthplace, 49, 50. 

Logic in Hegel's theory, 257. 

Logos, Justin's view of the, v; Persian 
and Greek origin, 37, 260 ; Neo-platonic 
idea, 52 ; hypostasis of, 55. 

Longanimity, 178. 

Lord's prayer, 148. 

Lourdes water, faith cure, 167. 

Love, the principle of progress, £9; fills 
our conception of absolute being, 62 ; 
and life, 117; and reverence, 131; 
load-stone of love, 134; and wooing, 
136; on birth of, "all things rose to 
men," 139; divining, 155; human is 
divine, 173; " more of," 174. 

Lowestoft witches, 185. 

Loyola and Xavier, miracles, 188. 

Luck-hillock superstition, 186. 

Luke, peculiarities of , 33, 36, 105, 113, 198. 

Lust, 134, 135. 

Lute, simile, 100. 

Luther's devil, 93, 95. 

Lyell and geology, 18. 

Lying never necessary, 144. 

McCook and Horatius, 122. 
Machasrus castle, 67. 
Madness and genius, 66. 
Magdala, 114. 
Magdalene, Mary, 42, 196. 
Magi, 47. 



Magnanimity and longanimity, 178. 

Malachi, transition from, 24. 

Malchus' ear, 179. 

Malevolence, 134. 

Mammoth cave guide, simile, 27. 

Man — a microcosm, 63 ; the, " who stole 
a meeting-house, " 99 ; akin to God, 116; 
one family, 119; "finest fruit," 120; 
epitome of cosmic forces, 202 ; of the 
world, 215; germ of angel, 249. 

Manhood development, 81, 82. 

Manichean theory, 96. 

Manner of Jesus, 83. 

Manners, 77, 136, 137, 215 ff. 

Marcion's New Testament, 21. 

Margaret, the criminal, 99. 

Mark, peculiarities of, 36, 39, 198. 

Marriage, 135. 

Martha and Mary, 141, 191, 239. 

Martyrs, life's victors, 79 ; reverence paid 
to, 123. 

Mary — of the priestly tribe, 44; annun- 
ciation to, 46 ; pondered but wavered, 
48; was married before the birth, 51 
(see "Magdalene" and "Martha"). 

Materialist misjudged, 139. 

Materiality of bodies in heaven, 248. 

Matter — and spirit, 15, 41; and mind, 
130,257; and sin, 261. 

Matthew, three divisions of, 32 ; pecu- 
liarities of, 36, 39, 50, 113, 198. 

Means and method of Jesus, 83. 

Meditation, 12, 157, 172, 173, 268. 

Meekness, abuses of, 176. 

Meeting kindred spirits, 69; Friends, 220. 

Memory and hell, 224, 225. 

Memra, "word," 260. 

Memento, " some day," 276. 

Mephistopheles, 95. 

Mercy and justice, 118; atonement, 213. 

Mesmerism, 170, 187. 

Messiah, premonition of, 66; Jesus be- 
lieved himself to be, 86; made rites 
obsolete, 105 ; claimants, 109 ; resur- 
rection for office of, 197; a prince, 261. 

Metaphysical argument — for a trinity, 
55, 56; for immortality, 233. 

Meteorology and prayer, 149, 150. 

Method and means of Jesus, 83. 

Metraton, mediator, 261. 

Migratory birds, simile, 236. 

Miltiades inspiring Union patriots, 122. 

Mimicry and mirth, 88. 

Mind — and matter, 130,257; condemn- 
ing beyond calibre, 140 ; reading, 168, 
169 ; outlasting the body, 237. 

Ministration, 179 ff. 

Minnow, simile, 184. 

Minstrel, simile, 236. 

Miracles — through prayer, 149 ff; Trench's 
enumeration, 179; a-priori theory, 180; 
orthodox theory, 180; $rz*wz-orthodox 



290 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



theory, 181; Hume, 181; Mill, 181; 
of 0. T., 182 ; are put aside as experi- 
ence widens, 183 ; Butler, Mozley, and 
Tyndall, 183 ; appeal to intellect, not 
to affections, 184; "minnow" and 
""Builder," 184; canons of disbelief 
and folk-lore, 185; modern, 188; doc- 
trine prove, 189; Zeit-geist, 189; alle- 
gory in, 190; no sign given, 191. 

Mirthfulness, 88. 

Miser " a beggar," 92 ; "a baby," 

Misfortune and character, 74, 267. 

Mistakes of Jesus, 106. 

Modesty and arrogance, 215 ff. 

Mohammedanism, spread of, 184. 

Monotheism — comes by reflection, 5S ; 
Jews *' elected" to teach, 203. 

Moonshine, simile, 245. 

Moral and mythological theories, 219. 

Morality, vestibule of religion, 129; " aim 
above," 130; affected by emoti. 
religion, 131; science, progressive, 145. 

Morrow, simile, 246. 

Moses and Elijah, 172; creation and 
lution, 202 ; and Numa, 262. 

Mother and child, 153, 154, 209, 253. 

Motive and feeling, 100. 

Multitudes fed, 179, 190. 

Music, simile, 90, 174. 

Mustard seed, simile, 126. 

Mutuality of mankind, 117 ff, 212. 

Mysterv, not absurditv, 9 ; "of love and 
thought," 60; of the fall, 96 ff ; of life, 
246; of theologies, 252. 

Mythologies, 259 ff. 

Nain, widow, 179, 191. 

Narcotics, 74, 225. 

Narration of the events, 3S ff. 

Nathan and David, 134. 

Nathaniel, 85, 105. 

Nativity, accessories of, 46 ff; date and 
place of, 49. 

Natural — religion distinct from revealed, 
58; man, 207; methods of God, 2 

Nature and God, 209. 

Nazareth, birth-place, 49, 50; and Ca- 
pernaum, 102. 

Nautilus shell, simile, 90. 

Nebuchadnezzar, 224. 

Necessity and freedom, 55, 56, 209. 

Nell Gwynne, 100. 

Neo-platonic ideas, 35, 37, 52, 257. 

Nero accusing the Christians, 45. 

Nettle, simile, 176. 

New England, lessons to, 12. 

New Testament records, dates of, 22 ff. 

Nicene creed, 14; council, 54. 

Nicodemus, 114, 1x6, 139 (see " Gospel "). 

Nicolai's case, 272. 

Noah, 17. 

Nobleman's son, 179. 



Noise and shallowness, 316. 
Non-resistance, 176 ff. 
Nova Zembla, simile, 209. 
Numa and Moses, 262. 

Oak, simile, 100, 147, 251. 
Obedience to law of the spirit, 212. 
Object and subject, 255 ff. 
Obligation and regeneration, 1 19. 
Ocean, simile, 57, 217, 226. 
Odium theolog: 
Odors crushed, simik 
Old Testament records, dat 

miracles, 1 
Om and Brahm, 260, 261. 
Omnipotence, omniscience, of Jesu-., 

onsand fruits, 140, 216. 
Oppression, di.<>: 
Optical illusions, 169, 188. 
Optimi f, 208. 

Order — of N ent records, 21 

ff; of Old Testament records, 2: 

incidents, 38 ff, 104, 105; change 

nature not disorder, 
Oriental i 

Ormuzd and Arimanes, 260. 
Orthodoxy dehn- 
Ostentation and repression, 215. 

Pain necessary to pleasure, 78, 

Pakamara 

Pantheism 

Papyrus Prisse, 

Parable and mi : 4 ff. 

t Geological, 

"deep are dumb," 217, 276; and 
puritv, r 
Passover, 206. 

to. 

Pater j 1 ft. 

imile, no. 
Patience, badge of Christianitv, 120, 
"beam 

Paul — advocates reasoning, 9 ; pro: 
inspiration of, 29; on the resurre*. 
mingling error and truth 
epL 

h of, in ideal Jesus, 
"id 

version of, i6q; on mir. , 189; 

the real resurrector of Jesus, 200; on 
election, 203 : on redemption, 205; on sal- 
vation, 208; changed his opinions. 
contrasted ir. ;.>plement- 

ary ^66. 

Peact . and love, 

163; anr 1 feeling, 217, 276. 

Pearl, simile 

Pebble, si. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



29I 



Pentateuch, date of, 23. . 

Perception — blurred by impurity, 16, 135 ; 
not inspiration, 26. 

Perfection — of being, 62 ; and expan- 
sion, 91; "is no trifle," 126. 

Periods — of Old Testament records, — 
Pre- Assyrian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Per- 
sian, Greek, Roman, — 23 

Perjury, 137. 

Permanence of regeneration, 214. 

Perpetuation of soul-life, 233 ff. 

Perseverance of the saints, 214. 

Persian — idea of creation, 37; Dualism, 
93,2591!. 

Personality, clinging to one's, 241 ; in 
heaven, 243. 

Perversion of texts, 17, 249. 

Peter — and Andrew, 85, 103, 105; and 
the resurrection, 196. 

Pharisaism, 140. 

Pharisees and John, 67. 

Philosophical religion, 120. 

Philosophy and theology, 207. 

Phrenology, 87, 187. 

Physician and son, simile, 100. 

Piccadilly censors, 140. 

Piety may be excessive, 89; ceremonial, 
emotional and doctrinal kinds of 173. 

Pilate, 177 (see " Acts"). 

Pilgrims music, 142. 

Pity from God, 155. 

Plain, simile, 251. 

Plagues, Egyptian, 182. 

Plan of salvation, 204 ff. 

Plato — and Christianity, 35, 37; derived 
bodies from agones, 52 ; explained 
immortality, 240; idea of soul, 245; 
supplementary metaphysics, 255 ; dia- 
lectic method, 257. 

Pleasure, pursuit of, 210, 211, 268. 

Pleroma in trinity, 56. 

Poetry — and inspiration, 26; and para- 
bles, 115. 

Political economy and higher law, 127. 

Polygamy, 17. 

Pompeii, sentinel, 123. 

Port of rest, simile, 253. 

Potter and clay, 202. 

Poverty, discipline of, 82 ; divine, 120 ; 
and wealth relative, 228. 

Prayer, Lords, 148; supplicational, 1496°; 
babe's cry, 153 ft; aspirational, 156 ff ; 
Nature's, 268. 

Prayer-books, concession to, no. 

Precipitancy, precept on, 138, 267. 

Prejudice, partisan, 139. 

Premonition of Messiah, 65. 

Present, not "grief-shadowed," 253. 

Pretension, badge of imbecility, 215. 

Pride and love, 217. 

Primordial germ, 202. 

Prison, soul has no, 78 ; simile, 174,238. 



Probation, life not, but education, 75; 

and damnation, 228, 230. 
Problems insoluble, 236. 
Procession of the Holy Spirit, 55, 56. 
Prodigal son, 214. 
Prodigies, 186 ff. 
Profanity, 137. 
Profession and sincerity, 215. 
Progress, law of, 59; of Christianity, 

128; and retrogression, 201 ; perpetual, 

of the soul, 233. 
Prophecy, whole trend of must be ob- 
served, 15; old and new view of, 28; 

of immortality, sense of personality, 

243 ; in mythology, 262. 
Prophets, function of, 65. 
Prosperity " lets go the bridle," 133. 
Protevangelion, the, 21, 50. 
Providence, 108, 115, 183, 270. 
Prudence and boldness, 216. 
Pseudopia, 169, 188, 197, 270 ff. 
Pseudopian theory of the resurrection, 

194 ff, 270 ff. 
Psychical and spiritual man, 207. 
Psychological parallel, 185. 
Ptolemais (Acre), 102, 103. 
Pump, simile, 163. 
Punishment certain, 224, 276. 
Purana, 64. 
Puritans, 141, 142. 

Purity essential to insight, 16 ; sexual, 134. 
Pyramids, simile, 27, 81, 82. 
Pythoness, 262. 

Quaker meeting, 220. 

Queen (see " Elizabeth" and "Victoria "). 

Quirinus (see " Cyrenius "). 

Rabbinical interpreters, 17. 

Rachel, 47. 

Raising the dead, 179, iSS. 

Ransom, Paul's natural naming, 205. 

Rarey and Buni, 170. 

Rationalism of Jesus, 10S. 

Rationalistic theory of resurrection, 194. 

Realizing the ideal and idealizing the 
real, 130, 138 ff. 

Reaping a destiny, 126. 

Reason, function of, 9 ff, 184; "not my 
tyrant," 14; defined, 16; and love, 59; 
law within itself, 63; "more of," 174; 
earthly and heavenly, 254; active and 
passive, 255; "pure" leads to three 
irreducible ideas, 256; tradition, 264. 

Reasoning urged by Jesus, 9. 

Rebuke, Jesus' manner of, 177. 

Reconciliation and patience, 134. 

Records, dates of, 22, 23. 

Recreations, 211. 

Red Sea, cleaving of, 182. 

Redemption, 204 ff. 

Refinement, Christian, 137. 



292 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



Reforms must be gradual, no. 

Regeneration, 212 ff*. 

Rejuvenatal argument, 237. 

Religion, Christian, triune, 119; denned, 
120, 131 ; has consummation in charac- 
ter, 131. 

Remembrance, "wings of," 252, 266. 

Renunciation, 68 ff . 

Repentance and regeneration, 85. 

Repression and babbling, 215, 217. 

Resignation, 124, 161. 

Resisting wrongs, 176 ff. 

Rest, "bed of," 210; "port of," 2- 

Resurrection — of Jesus' body, 193 ff; of 
sympathy, 243; "of life," 248; "a 
mightier," 250. 

Reticence, 215 ff; 275. 

Reunion in heaven, 253. 

Reutterances by Jesus, 115. 

Revealed religion and natural. 

Revelation, a divine education, 12 ; of 
God in the soul, 58. 

Reverence, religion depends on, 119; 
uses and abuses of, 123 ; and love, mat- 
ter of Jesus' teaching, 131; deepens 
with knowledge, 221. 

Rhapsody and repression, 215. 

Riches, duty to seek, 141 ; "baggage," 268. 

Right and wrong, 143. 

Righteousness and creeds, 131. 

Rites, uses of, 173. 

Ritual and religion, 131, 206. 

River, simile, 76, 100, 246, 247, 253. 

Rock of ages, simile, 250. 

Rocket, simile, 237. 

Roman — period of records, 23 ; festival, 49. 

Sabbath, 107, 108, 142. 
Sacrifice, Paul's natural naming, 205. 
Saints, "perseverance of the," 214. 
Salome, step-daughter of Antipas, 103 ; 

Zebedee's wife, 196. 
Salvation, 204 ff ; 218 ff. 
Samaritan woman, 106, 116. 
Sanctuary "of sorrow," 210. 
Sanhedrim, 178. 
Santa Claus and folk-lore, 1S5. 
Satan, 223, 262. 
Satire — as a pulpit weapon, 88; of 

dunces, 139. 
Savoy, Hester, Lamb's lines to, 251. 
Saved and lost, proportion, 231, 232. 
Scandal, precept on, 139. 
Schellingian theory of God, 255. 
Scheme of salvation, 204. 
Scholastics, "busily idle," 130. 
Schools of apostolic doctrine, four, 36 ; 

of philosophy, 255 ff. 
Schreckhorn, simile, 209. 
Science, from matter to spirit, 15; man 

of misjudged, 139. 
Scorn, 276. 



Scotch philosophers, 130, 255. 

Sea, cleaving of, 182; simile, 221, 226, 

244, 253, 265. 
Second sight, 168, 160, 263. 
Secret and method ot Jesus, 83. 
Sectarianism, 10, 139, 187. 
Sedgwick and geolog 
Segregation of the wicked, no. 
Seed, simile, v, 25, 60, 115, 126, 138, 250. 
Self — denial, 76 ft, - 5 ; " chord 

of," 79; "reverence," "knowledge," 
"control," 90, 211, 221; conceit, 91, 
266; "conquest," '*< ' i»7, 

212 ; continen »n, 175 ft; 

" annihilation," 2< . 216. 

four 
inhib- 
" 
bihty, religious, "c 
*nol 

■c fleet and will, 255. 

Serenit 

Sermon on thi 

113ft; ' 

> ff; thr^ 

Serpent, devil tradition, 94,262; charm- 

■ 
Sepulchre, real and I 199. 

Seventy, sending of the, 105. 
Shade 
Shad " of 

death," "lai 
Shan, 

Shekin , 213. 

Shell, - 
Sheph 

. 209. 

Shore. 

Shu-k 

Sibyls and inspiration. 

Sick, healing of the, 166, 170. 

Sign, v prodigies 

and, 186: 

hei.L 
Silence — "go! e arraignment, 

f prudence, 316. 
Siloam. 

Similes fn. : . 103. 

Simplk 
Sin — den :' the 

fall," 96 ff; and death, . 
Sinai and 1 1 
Sincerity, 1 

Sine and ang , ioo. 

Sixth sense. 
Skeleton, simile, 14. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



293 



Sky-prophets, 103. 

Slander, precept against, 139, 268. 

Slavery, distorting texts for, 1 7 ; abolition 
of prophesied, 28 ; not odious to Whit- 
field, 146. 

Sleep, simile, 154, 253 ; and dreams, 272. 

Sliding-scale test, 230. 

Small-pox, superstition, 186. 

Society " prepares the crime," 100. 

Socrates — on God, 64, 260 ; on manly 
virtue, "Arete," 81; on love, 139; on 
Tartarus, 224 ; on immortality, 239. 

Solace and memento, 251, 276. 

Solidarity of mankind, 117 ff, 212. 

Solitude, 90, 266, 268. 

Somnambulism, 170. 

Sorrow, 11, 76, 133, 210, 267. 

Soul — "is a universe," 62; "of all 
beings," 63 ; uniform, body multiform, 
233 ; does not decay with body, 237. 

Sow a habit, reap a character, 126. 

Sower, parable, 115. 

Space and time, 233, 256. 

Sparrow, parable, 115. 

Special providence, 108, 183, 270. 

Speech and silence, 215 ff; unpremed- 
itated, prophetic, 262. 

Spinoza's Christianity, 145 ; theism, 180. 

Spirit — and substance, 41 ; guidance, 
151 ; and matter, 261. 

Spontaneity of consciousness, 127. 

Spread of Christianity, 128. 

Spring, simile, 245, 250, 252. 

Stairs, simile, 174. 

Standard of righteousness, 131. 

Staniforth's conversion, 169. 

Star — heralding, 46 ff, 50 ; simile, 19, 77, 
78, 234, 250. 

State, heroes constitute, 178. 

Stenography, bigot attacking, 1S7. 

Step backward is forward, 74. 

Stilling tempest, 179, 190. 

Stone at tomb, simile, 200. 

Storm, simile, 253. 

Stream "of tendency," 60. 

Style and culture, 215 ff. 

Subject and object, 255. 

Sublapsarian theory, 97. 

Subtleties not law, n. 

Success, effect on character, 74 ff. 

Sufferings, discipline of, 120, 220. 

Suffrage, 120, 185. 

Summer, simile, 250, 251. 

Sunbeam, simile, iii, 174. 

Sunday, 142, 220. 

Sunset, simile, 233, 249. 

Sunshine, simile, 40. 

Supernatural, the, as to inspiration, 26 ; 
deity of Jesus, 57; omnipotence of 
Jesus, 106; healing, 166; transfigura- 
tion, 172; miracles, 180; God prefers 
natural methods, 272. 



Supersensible existences, 248. 

Superstition — and faith, 14 ; compara- 
tively harmless, 57; Jesus not engaged 
questioning, 107 ; profanes worship, 
123; educating out of, 152; Chinese, 
Japanese, 186 ; Mexican, African, Jew- 
ish, 187; dies out, 208; Oriental, 261 
ff; "in solitude," 270. 

Supplication, 148 ff. 

Supralapsarian theory, 96. 

Surprise in heaven, 237. 

Swaggering, badge of imbecility, 137,215. 

Swedenborg's second sight, 168. 

Sweet reasonableness of Jesus, 83. 

Swiss mercenary, simile, 12. 

Syllogism in religious science, 13. 

Symbolism and idolatry, 41. 

Sympathy — of Jesus with John Baptist, 
69; solacing, 78 ; as motive, 128 ; not 
lost," 239. 

Symphonies, prelude of heaven, 254. 

Synoptics, digests of earlier traditions, 
32 ; peculiarity of, 36. 

Syro-Phcenician woman, 179. 

Tabulation of the records, 23. 

Talmud, date of, 23. 

Tartarus, 223, 224. 

Telescope, simile, 10, 181. 

Teleologv — and immortality, 233 ; in 

Hegers system, 257. 
Temperance, 74. 
Tempest, stilling, 179, 190; simile, 158, 

238, 250, 251, 276. 
Temple, departure from the, 109. 
Temptation of Jesus, eight views of, 73 

ff; to get body gratification, fame and 

power, 83 ff ; metaphysics of, 94. 
Tenderness of Jesus, 64. 
Test of character, 81, 82. 
Theanthropism, 58. 
Theism, 208. 
Theology — denned, 127 ; philosophy, 

207. 
Thirst for God in prayer, 164. 
Thirty-nine articles, 184, 194. 
Thor and Apollo, 262. 
Thought — and action, 91, 92; reading, 

168, 169; and speech, 217; never lost, 

238 ; analysis of, 257. 
Threshing floor, 16. 
Thundering Legion, miracle, 183. 
Tiberias, 102. 
Time, precept o*n economy of, 138 ; and 

space, 233, 256. 
Tiresias and Hercules, 48. 
Tobit, Jonah and Daniel, 182. 
Toil and Vigil "guard the gates of 

Bliss," 8 1. _ 
Toleration, vi. 
Torch, simile, 135. 
Traders, ejection of, 175. 



294 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



Tradition — Triple, 32, 38; and reason, 
263. 

Trance, prophecy, 262; Weeks' case, 
270. 

Transcendental and experiential theories 
of right and wrong, 143. 

Transfiguration, 172 ff, 269. 

Transformation in heaven, 247. 

Transgression (see " Sin "). 

Transition from the carnal, 207 ff. 

Travellers " Faith " and " Reason," 
allegory, 20. 

Treasures taken beyond death,. 239, 254. 

Tree, rings of, simile, 33. 

Triads, Greek and Egyptian, 260. 

Triangle, symbol of God, 260. 

Trinity — and unity, 52 ff; metaphysical 
argument for, 55, 56; Hindu, 260; 
Egyptian, 260. 

Triple tradition in Matthew, 32 ; in the 
Synoptics, 38. 

Triumph of Jesus, 199. 

Triumphal entry, 176. 

Triunity, 53. 

Trouble, precept on borrowing, 138. 

Trust and truth, 235. 

Truth — perceived by the pure, 16, 135; 
survives error, 30; seeing, broadet 
89; and beauty, 115; embalms error, 
137; and falsehood, 143; and faith, 
147; "more of," 174; great, never 
leaves us, 238; eternal, 251, 254. 

Tubingen school, 41, 190. 

Turnus and shade-land, 194. 

Ubiquity of spirits, 263. 

Ulysses and the Sirens, 77. 

Uncle Tom and Jeanie Deans, 142. 

Unconscious cerebration, 170. 

Understanding — and pure reason, 255 ; 
convince, not overbear. 265. 

Unity— and trinity, 53 ff; "from devo- 
tion," 161. 

Universal soul, 64. 

Universe — and God, 61, 62; unseen, 
248. 

Unknown future joys, 234, 244. 

Upas tree, 186. 

Uriah and Bathsheba, 134. 

Uses and abuses of faculties, 88. 

Valor and profession, 215 ff. 

Vedas, 63. 

Veneration, 117 ff. 

Vengeance, 231. 

Verification of narrations, 189 ff. 

Verifying faculty, reason and good will, 

16. 
Vicarious sacrifice, 204, 213. 
Victoria — and the fast-day petition, 152 ; 

wreath, flower-miracle, 167. 



Victors, life's, 79. 

Violet, simile, 245, 252. 

Virgin, apparition of the, 188. 

Virtue, middle between opposite vices, 
89; defined, 91; five constituents of, 
133; "is at hand," 157; "first steps 
to," 266. 

Vis a tergo, 98. 

Vishnu and Brahma, 261. 

Visions, 169, 170, 188, 197, 269 ff. 

Volcano, simile, 45. 

Volition, intellection, and emotion, 101, 

255 ff- 
Vulgarity, precept against, 137. 

Wagers, fool's arguments, 137. 
Waiting wisely, 138. 
Waking, simile, 253. 
Walking on water, 1 
Washington and Hampden, 121. 
Wealth — and poverty, 120; to seek, 
ml 

md Johnson, 126; holy mien 

<x>l, simil- 

. 146. 

iqo. 

1 f the, 98 ff (sec ■' 
tioi 

. miracle, 179, 190. 
Winter, simile, 245, 250. 

. s 'e,9ff; "wor 
251. 

hand, miracle, 179. 
Woer 

itwt, 37, 260. 
Worship — ercy, 220; Hindu, 

. 268, 
201. 
Wrong and right, 143. 

Xavier and Loyola, miracles of, 

Yahveh (see " JahveV 
Vang and Yin, supers - 

in Jesus, 131 ; " the 

210. 
Years, flood of, simile. 
Youth, enthusiasm and faith, 16, 129, 

267. 

Zacharias, 46. 

Zealots' battles with Herod, 1 1 

1S9. 
Zeno > s morals. 1 
Zoilus and Homer, 26S. 



SUPPLEMENTAL NOTE. 



The comment upon the precepts of the Sermon on the 
Mount, enjoining economy, simplicity, etc., and the animadver- 
sion at page 186 upon our present outrageous alphabet and 
" orthography," — cacography, rather, — may here be supple- 
mented by an illustration of the proposed u International 
Alphabet" of the Spelling Reform Association, for an electro- 
type duplicate of which the author is indebted to the courtesy 
of T. R. Vickroy, Ph.D., editor and publisher of the . 
Teacher, St. Louis, Mo., official organ thereof. This alphabet 
of thirty-six letters is at least a good approximate ideal goal 
for future achievement under the battle-cry, One symbol for 
each sound, one sound for t\: ; ; > ( >/. Its general adoption 

can hardly be expected, until after some gradual reforms 
(already initiated by several newspapers) as to certain anoma- 
lies or "literal depravities,'' whose amendment requires no 
new type; thus, k 'tho," " enuf," " progra: al," M h 

" givn," " hed," " alfabet," " sum n (some), M dum," " tang," M cat- 
alog," "dipt," "drest," etc. 

[see NKXT »A 



INTERCARPAL ALFCtBET. 



a a A a G a B b C c 

E e Ff G g H h Ii 

M m N" n TJ y O o e 

Ss R K Tt d ft -6 t 

V v W w Y y Z z 



K R 


D d 


E e 


J J 


J J 


:l i 


O o 


Pp 


R r 


IT u 


U u 


U u 



Blesed ar fti pur in spirit : for ftarz iz fti kirjdum 
ey hevn. 

5 Blesed ar fta flat morn : for fta £al bfe cumf erted. 

Blesed ar fti mfek : for ft a £al inherit fti erti. 

Blesed ar fta ftat hmjger and terst after raifius- 
nes : for fta. £al be fild. 

Blesed ar fti mersiful : for fta £al ebtan mersi. 

Blesed ar fti piur in hart : for fta Hal sfe God. 

Blesed ar fti pfesmakerz : for fta £al bfe cold 
sunz ev God. 

Blesed ar fta ftat hav bin perseciuted for railius- 
nes' sak: for ftarz iz fti kiijdum ev hevn. Blesed 
ar yfe hwen men £al reproii yu, and perseciut yu, 
and sa ol maner ev fevl agenst yu folsli, for jmai 
sak. Rejeis, and bfe ecsfediq glad : for grat iz yur 
reword in hevn : for so perseciuted fta fti prof ets 
hwifi wer befor yu. 



lu 

11 



12 



RECORDS OF JESUS REVIEWED, 



AND 



FIFTY QUESTIONS ANSWERED 



THROUGH 



Five Hundred Reverent Reasoners. 



BENJAMIN F. BURNHAM 



They were dulling their teeth at the shell while I was 
enjoying the kernel. — Goethe. 



BOSTON: 

The Union Company. 

1883. 



% 



>>>»> 



► > > 


> > 






► > 


> 




' 


» > 


> 






» > > 


^ 






> > 


> 




J 


> > 


» 




1 


) > 


> 




J 


> > 


> 




;* 


> y~m 


> 




^ 


> ^~>» 


> 




^ 


> > 




> > 




> > 


i 


> 


i 


o > 


> 


-> 


> > 


•x 




> 




I» 


>' 




> "> 


J» 




,> 


> > 


"!► 


> 


» -> 



K 



» 

» > 






1 -> 


> 


> 


~^ > 


i > 


> 


► 7> 


► > 


> 


~7t? "*• 


> 


> 


> 


"> > 


> 


"> 


^> 


•"- 


•> 


> 


> 


» 


► » > 


> 


3 


» fr I 


> > 

> 


> 

> 




> 

> : 


> > 






> 


> ^> 


■ > 




^ 


> ^> 


-:> 




> 


> ^> 


:> 




."> 


> > 


:> 




^ 


) > 


"> 




>r> 


V>^> 


~"~> 




^z> 





9 




> 




> 




;> 




:> 




> 


>' 


> 










> > 




) > 


^> 




~> 






^ > 

> > > 






3> >- 

> > > 

> > > 

> > > 



> 3 j> 

> > 

> > 

> > 

> > 



> 


J> 1!^ > 


J^ 


JB> 


7> 


3 ^ > 


^^ 


~>> 


^> 


> ^> 


1 ^^ 


^>: 


z> 


> ^ 


' ^Zj^ 


^B 


> 


> ^ 


:> 


JS> 


;> 


> > 


J^ 


Z& 


;> 


J> :> 


:> 


I» 


~~* 


► 


;> ^> 


> 








> >"■> 


2> 




^> -> 


> 


T>3 


~3 


► 


^> ~> 


2> 






Z» 






> 






-O > > 


~> 


:» 


> 




:> . 





730 



> 


> 


> 


> 


> 


."» 


> 


> 


> 


> 






T> 


> 


"> 


> 


> 


> 


Z>~JJ 


"> 


>: 


> 


> 


:> 


>> 


> 


y 







LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 066 101 3 



t. 



